Susan Kokinda argues that President Trump has openly ruptured with the UK over Iran, base access, and broader British policies on energy and immigration, while treating Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz as a more reliable partner and moving to cut trade with Spain over NATO and base issues.
She says Britain blocked US use of Diego Garcia and other RAF bases for initial strikes, prompting Trump’s public criticism.
Kokinda frames Lloyd’s of London’s decision to cancel war-risk coverage for Gulf shipping as a weapon of British imperial power, and highlights Trump’s response: directing the US Development Finance Corporation to provide political risk insurance and putting the Navy on notice to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
She adds that Iranian strikes on Gulf neighbors pushed GCC states into condemning Iran and aligning more closely with the US.
Chapters
00:00 The Midweek Update - Intro
02:19 "This Is Not the Age of Churchill" — The Special Relationship Is Over
06:55 The King's Insurance Market — Three Centuries of Crown Control Over Global Trade
09:32 Iran's Gift to Trump — The Gulf Alliance Nobody Expected
Snapshots and Notes
During his meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Tuesday (4 Mar), Donald Trump said out loud in the Oval Office what no American president has said in 80 years.
“Spain has been very, very uncooperative, and so has UK.
“Now, the second one is shocking, but this is not the age of Churchill.
“I will say the UK has been very, very uncooperative with it, and they ruin relationships; it’s a shame.”
But the president didn’t just publicly trash Britain from the Oval Office; he outflanked Britain’s chaotic operation in the Strait of Hormuz.
When Lloyd’s of London announced it was terminating insurance for Gulf shipping, a move that could throw the world economy into chaos, President Trump ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation to step in and provide that coverage.
And he put the Navy on notice to escort tankers through the Strait.
What you’re watching is an American president who doesn’t need Britain’s permission to strike Iran and doesn’t need Britain’s insurance markets to keep the world’s oil moving.
300 years of crown control over that choke point broken in a single day.
Watch the SHELL GAME and not the shells…
Now, if you’ve been watching the news this week, you’re being told America is stumbling into another Middle Eastern quagmire, that it’s going to be a perpetual war and economic chaos, and it’s a president who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
That’s the drumbeat from the same people who cheered on every British-backed regime change operation of the last 30 years.
Susan Kokinda has tracked how the British have used Iran as a trigger for economic and strategic chaos since the days of the gas lines.
And she has watched every president since Jimmy Carter let it happen until now.
“This Is Not the Age of Churchill” — The Special Relationship Is Over (02:19)
Let’s go back to the Oval Office…
The trigger was Iran.
Britain blocked the United States from using Diego Garcia and British Air Force bases for the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury.
Trump had to reroute missions, adding hours of flight time.
So when he sat down with German Chancellor Mertz on Tuesday, he didn’t hold back.
“I’m not happy with the UK either.
“That island that you read about, the lease, okay, he made it for whatever reason; he made a lease of the island.
“Somebody came and took it away from him.
“And it’s taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there.
“It would have been much more convenient to land there rather than fly for many extra hours.
“So we are very surprised.“
Despite the fact that Britain relented on March 1st and allowed the U.S. limited use of its bases for defensive purposes, Prime Minister Keir Starmer drilled down on Britain’s opposition to Trump’s actions in Iran, speaking to Parliament…
“We all remember the mistakes of Iraq.
“And we have learned those lessons, any UK actions must always have a lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan.
“I say again, we were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran, and we will not join offensive action now.”
He said, we all remember the mistakes of Iraq - that is pretty rich coming from the land of Tony Blair.
But then the prime minister dutifully reported the talking point, which came from the empire’s think tank, Chatham House, a few days ago.
He said, this government does not believe in regime change from the skies.
What Stermer has repeated is the globalist narrative that Donald Trump is using their regime change playbook, and it’s not going to work.
Well, their problem is that’s not what he’s doing.
So while the strategic split between the United States and the British is out in the open, there is more to Trump’s break with the British.
“But the UK, what they’re doing with energy and what they’re doing with immigration is horrible.
“You have the North Sea.
“Somebody said yesterday, what would you do if you were in the UK?
“Open up the North Sea.
“They got windmills all over the place that are ruining the country, ruining the landscapes, ruining the beautiful fields.
“Open up the North Sea.
“And number two, illegal immigration.
“They got to solve that problem.”
Windmills, immigration, those aren’t military complaints.
That is a systemic indictment of the British model.
Green energy deindustrialization is the pet project of the British royal family.
King Charles has made it his personal mission, including through Lloyd’s, as we’ll get to.
An unfettered mass immigration is a frontal assault on the coherence of society itself.
And Donald Trump has rejected both.
Now, look who was sitting next to Donald Trump at that press availability - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who backed the U.S. position on Iran and who recently stated that shutting down Germany’s nuclear power plants was a catastrophic mistake.
Merz is signaling that Germany wants to exit the managed energy decline that the British imperial system has imposed on Europe.
So for the first time since World War II, an American president is treating Germany as a more reliable partner than Britain, not out of sentiment, but because Britain remains committed to the imperial system, which Trump is dismantling, while Germany under Mertz is signaling it wants out.
Now, Spain does get a footnote…
Trump told Treasury Secretary Bessent to cut off all trade with Madrid for refusing base access and dodging NATO commitments.
Donald Trump is not fooling around.
So the U.S.-British conflict that we’ve been exposing for decades is now playing out in the open, from the Oval Office to the Strait of Hormuz.
And on the very same day that Trump lowered the boom on Britain, he took direct aim at one of the oldest financial instruments of British imperial power.
The King’s Insurance Market — Three Centuries of Crown Control Over Global Trade (06:55)
On Monday, March 2nd, leading ship insurers, including Lloyds of London, announced they were canceling war risk coverage for the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent waters.
One third of the world’s oil flows through that strait.
Without insurance, no tanker moves.
Without tankers, the global economy starts to tremble.
The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just a shipping lane; it’s the jugular of the global energy economy, and Lloyd’s of London has been the gatekeeper for three centuries, deciding who gets coverage and who gets shut out.
Now, don’t take my word for it, take theirs.
When King George V laid the foundation stone of the Lloyds Building back in 1925, he called it the embodiment of the highest qualities of British commerce.
And he said that Lloyd's services, quote,
“all maritime peoples who are in peace and amity with the British Empire, in peace and amity with the British Empire.”
In other words, you get coverage if the crown approves of you.
And suddenly, Lloyds is pulling insurance from a war zone.
That doesn’t look like risk management; that looks like a weapon.
And Lloyds continues to flaunt its ties to the royals, dedicating a whole section of its website to royal moments.
Not only that, Lloyds has been the enforcer of the green agenda.
In 2021, then Prince Charles showed up at Lloyd’s to launch his Sustainable Markets Initiative Insurance Task Force, his vehicle for using the global insurance market to enforce the climate agenda on every nation on earth.
The same green agenda that Trump has been systematically dismantling.
So when Lloyds pulls war risk management on the Strait of Hormuz, that is not a neutral actuarial decision.
That is the Crown’s financial instrument deciding who gets to move energy through the world’s most critical choke point.
Donald Trump broke that control yesterday when the president announced that the United States Development Finance Corporation would provide political risk insurance at very reasonable prices for all ships traveling through the Gulf and that the Navy would escort tankers if needed.
He concluded by saying the United States will ensure the free flow of energy to the world.
T h i s.
I s
B I G.
The empire is no longer controlling that vital choke point….
Now here’s the final piece, and it’s the one that ties the entire week together.
Iran’s Gift to Trump - The Gulf Alliance Nobody Expected (09:32)
While Trump was openly denouncing the British and replacing the king’s insurance market, Iran was doing something no American diplomat had achieved in 50 years of trying.
It drove the entire Gulf Cooperation Council into an emergency session, which issued a joint statement condemning Iran.
Iran has attacked nations that had been mediating between itself and the US.
The Gulf nations of Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain had chosen restraint and diplomacy over escalation.
Right up until the moment, Iranian missiles started hitting their hotels, their airports, and their residential neighborhoods.
President Trump took note.
“The president told me, quote, we were surprised.
“We told those countries we’ve got this, and now they want to fight, and they’re aggressively fighting.
“They were going to be very little involved, and now they insist on being involved.
“The Iranians, the president said, quote, shot into a hotel.
“They shot into an apartment house.
“It just made them (meaning the Arab countries) angry.
“They love us, but they were watching.
“There was no reason for them to be involved, unquote.”
Even globalist institutions like the Atlantic Council recognized the dramatic shift underway with a March 2nd headline that read, the gulf that emerges from the Iran war will be very different.
This is not a coincidence.
This is a realignment in keeping with what President Trump is building with the Abraham Accords and the Board of Peace.
The empire has spent decades and decades keeping the region divided and dependent on its political and economic framework.
The Accords and the Board of Peace were shutting down that game.
And now Iran’s missiles have accelerated the next phase, driving the same Gulf sovereign nations that signed or were on the verge of signing the Abraham Accords into a de facto military alignment with the United States out of the simple need to defend themselves.
Summary
So let’s put this all together.
Sitting in the Oval Office, President Trump publicly denounced Britain’s strategic and economic policies.
He ordered the United States to replace the King’s Insurance Company in the Strait of Hormuz.
And Iran’s own missiles drove the entire Gulf into Trump’s arms, building the sovereign nation’s coalition that the old imperial system was designed to prevent.
The old order will not go quietly.
The risk is real, and President Trump is taking it on, on behalf of a future free of imperial manipulation.
Members of the Promethean Action and decisive Liberty News communities are better equipped to understand that than anybody.
In times like this, the world needs people with strategic clarity.
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