Trump Just Revealed His Plan To Leave Iran - It's As Bad As You Think | News Round-Up

In this news roundup of the week for Friday, July 10th, 2026, President Trump floats what he's obviously going to become.He's way out of the Iran war.It's as bad as you would think.Far -right political leader Marine Le Pen has her sentence for embezzling reduced, meaning that she can stand as candidate for president next year.

A post that the polls suggest she's going to win, which would transform France on the world stage.And...

Far -right political leader Nigel Farage calls a special by -election, resigning his seat and determined to fight to re -win it again against all comers in a special People vs the Establishment election.

Only, it seems to have backfired horribly almost within minutes.Lots to discuss, so let's jump straight in.President Trump has tried a number of things to achieve a major success in preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

He's thrown missiles in everything the US military could think of and supported Israel assassinating the top leadership.He's threatened the Iranians with even more if they don't sign a deal to his liking.He sent two estate agent people to negotiate with the regime.Top marks for left field thinking there.He signed a one -sided surrender deal in order to get Iran to the table where he will give them what they want to let him off the hook.And then he had the military throw some more random ordnance around just to show that he means business, even if everyone knows his weapons stockpile is seriously depleted.

Bizarrely.Astonishingly.None of that seems to have worked.But speaking to reporters on the flight back from the NATO summit this week, we finally got a glimpse of the President's… what would it be by now?

Plan F, maybe?The stroke of genius that will finally extricate him from the Iran war and achieveall of his objectives.Well, I hate to say it, but this particular Plan F kinda was anticipated.Trump told journalists that he doesn't need a deal anymore because Iran has already been denuclearized.Yes, you remember that last year, after the first wave of strikes by the US and Israel about the nuclear installations, the Trump -approved messaging was that Iran's nuclear program had been, quote, Obliterated.

Details unimportant.Focus on the word obliterated.General Jeffrey Cruz got fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for saying something different to the President's message, you'll recall.Some nonsense he was muttering about actual reality, which obviously is not the sort of thing that manly man's man Pete Hegseth, currently doing a purge of a Navy for anyone with a beard, is not what he likes to hear.And then suddenly after all of that, the programme was an imminent threat again, needing an extended war, because President Trump needed a justification for the thing that he just decided he wanted to do anyway.And if that process brought about regime change, well, that'd be cool, if it meant that America could get control of Iran's oil, and maybe a joint venture partner in fleecing transport ships for tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.

If none of that happens, well okay, but nevertheless denuclearise.Well, I give you plan F. Simply reinstate that fabulous success status of last year's operation and declare that the war has been a raging success.So Trump said this, I was there for one reason, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.I call it weapons of mass destruction.Iran.And that's happened.

They will never have a nuclear weapon.and all that nuclear dust that Trump was so insistent the United States should take control of, that was utterly irrelevant now.He said this, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground.Nobody's going to be able to get it except us.They can't get it.I think it's a tremendous success.

No, just six weeks ago, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was describing physically taking control of Iran's enriched uranium as quote, a red line for the president.We'd assumed that this was a red line as in a non -negotiable outcome.To be fair, it might have been a red line as in a teacher writing on your homework.Could do better.

Do teachers still do that sort of thing?Just possible I'm showing my age there.Now those amongst you who are paying attention might be asking yourself a question.

If Iran's nuclear programme is now completely and utterly dead, it is no more, it has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker, an ex -nuclear programme, then why?You may be wondering, did the United States, at enormous cost, hurl a high percentage of its weapons into a fiery oblivion there?Why did they kill thousands of Iranians, including most of their former senior leadership, with a loss of 13 of their own lives?Why did they provoke Iran to clamp down the Strait of Hormuz, pushing the entire world into an energy crisis?And why, come to that, have they been demanding that Iran has to make a deal?with all those threats about what will happen if Iran should not sort itself out in agreeing to one.

I mean, I suppose if you didn't really care about making a deal.you might well send a couple of real estate guys to lead the proceedings.Maybe it was a stroke of genius after all, cunningly disguised as incompetence, that Grand Master of 38 Double D Chess strikes again.It was always a strong possibility this would end up the deal.Trump walks away, in reality in abject failure, but actively spinning like crazy, but it's really a massive triumph.As I said before, that is the only outcome that is wholly within his power.

Every other version relies on Iran actually making a deal of some sort.When Trump launched off the latest round of random missile attacks, some commentators have been saying things like, oh, Iran is possibly overplaying its hand here.And they were making the category error that says everyone believes a deal is needed for them to get what they want.

Well, Iran, and particularly the Iranian hardliners, they are ideologically committed to their version of a no deal outcome.

That's how it seems anyway.They perceive the United States lost the war and is now desperate to extricate itself, they will be better briefed than any of us just how depleted America's weapons stockpile has become and how unpopular the war is amongst the US public as a whole.So, sure, they're pushing for sanctions relief, but they probably know that their maximal victory outcome that they really want has the downside that the US maintains international sanctions against them.They were surviving okay with that before, it holds no fear for them.But it would explain why they have been determined, above all else, that they establish a firm grip over the traffic through the streets.of Hormuz.

The income stream from that is the reward of winning the war.The other stuff, the supposed $300 billion investment fund, the sanctions relief, well, sure, it'd be fine if the US was so denuded of any remaining self -respect that it actually accepts whatever minimal constraints Iran may offer on nuclear activity in return for all of that.

But they behave as though they don't care if they have the deal.The United States leaving is all they really demand.And that is going to happen without Iranian capitulation.

So when it does, that will give the aura of Iran's triumph all the more force.

It will become harder to ignore.

For nuclear development, it's going to be a more difficult affair.Because even if Trump stays in his own special la -la land until the end of his term as president, telling everyone what an amazing success he had in Iran, while angrily denouncing anyone who says otherwise, which means a lot of denouncing is in Trump's near -term future, I suspect, Israel is more determined that reality should match the rhetoric, because they're at the sharp end.What Iran doesn't want, is a situation where every couple of years the Israelis just swoop in again and destroy whatever's been rebuilt in the meantime.

A so -called mowing the lawn strategy.So they will likely want to move forward with getting a nuclear weapon, because they've noted that Trump is not attacking North Korea, the war is underlined for them, that they really should have one of those things.But Israel assumes that as soon as they do, it will definitely be used against them, which to be fair is compatible with numerous Iranian statements.and, let's face it, has hardly become less likely after the last few months of attacks and leadership assassinations.And so, regardless of who's Israeli Prime Minister, they are likely to act to prevent that.It means Iran will probably follow a softly -softly programme, one that goes hand -in -hand with rebuilding and updating its defences, but that tries not to give Israel the excuse that it wants.

Now it's clear at this stage that President Trump is just floating his rationale for walking away, his no -deal US exit strategy, just putting it out there as one of his random statements.If the pushback is strong and the scepticism amongst the public high, then maybe he'll retreat on that one as well.

But he's going to come back to it sooner or later.

Still, today he followed up his comments by, yet again, declaring that the Iranians had asked him to continue negotiations.

Which, at this stage, I think we have enough evidence to dismiss at first sight as just being the usual Trumpian lying.For all that plenty of media outlets reported it as if it were fact, just based on Trump saying so.Which is a choice you can make, I suppose.But the evidence suggests it's the mediators, particularly the Qataris, who are trying to bring both sides together.

And yes, Trump will keep trying to bully a better outcome over the coming days, maybe weeks, so long as negotiations are happening.

But it's hard to see how that achieves a better result in the future than it has so far.And again, walking away while boasting is the only thing he can ultimately do without the Iranians playing a part, the part they seem determined not to play.So it defaults to some flavour of this, sooner or later.Whatever he does now, it is likely it's not going to make much difference to the mid -term elections, where the die has rather been cast.His call – judge me on the quality of my hallucinations – is a novel election pitch, but we'll have to see if that works out for him.But he's not the only one.

In France and in Britain this week, right -wing populist leaders who have been enduring legal scrutiny of alleged financial rules -breaking have punted the decision over their fitness to be in office to the electorate.The major story is that of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far -right L 'Assemblée Nationale party in France.Le Pen was convicted of embezzling EU funds.That was to pay party employees who were carrying out non -EU -related work, rather than personal enrichment.But, as far as the law is concerned, it's still misuse of public money.Her original sentence had her barred from holding political office for a period of time that would have counted her out from being able to stand once again as candidate for the presidency.

And that for the election where, according to the polls, she has a better chance of actually winning the election than she's ever had before.

So she appealed her conviction and her sentence and this week the verdict was in.The conviction was upheld, but the sentence was reduced.Specifically, the ban on her standing for office was shortened and she faced a year of home detention with an electronic tag.She'd previously said that she wouldn't campaign under those conditions, but faced with the reality of that as an outcome, she confirmed she will be standing in the next electionall.

And the pitch is the obvious one.Beloved of MAGA -style populists everywhere, the establishment is out to get us.Yes, it may look like I embezzled money, but really it's just the deep states doing their best to sabotage me for the real crime of speaking the truth, and so on and so on.

The question is, does it fly with the voting public?

We know that the MAGA base in the United States will absorb and fervently repeat whatever old garbage Donald tells them, even when he changes the message completely.I support Trump because he promised no new wars in the Middle East.Sorry, I meant to say, I support Trump because he's giving those Iranians a good kicking.Nuclear program, obliteration, that's what I voted for, mutter mutter drool.Does the same appeal to anti -authority work for the French public?

Very much an open question.There's a huge groundswell of disillusion around the centrist Napoleonic type figure of President Macron.

And as you sometimes see in elections, when people have sat on seething resentment and dislike for an extended period of time, it can lead to some pretty dramatic consequences.

Now, Macron can't stand in the next election, so it depends how well others can distinguish themselves as real characters and put some distance between themselves and Macron.But Le Pen and the far -right party generally have been historically seen as toxic, beyond the pale, for a very long period.For Le Pen candidacy, Marine Le Pen in recent times, but then her truly unapologetically racist and obnoxious father behind her, Jean -Marie Le Pen, she has been edging further and further up the results.Le Pen has done a lot to detoxify the party since taking over from her father, although, let's be honest,it remains a pretty radical proposition.France holds two -stage presidential elections.

The first stage, which in 2027 will take place on April 18th, all candidates are available for you to vote on.Then the top two go through to a final head -to -head run -off round.That's two weeks later on May 2nd.

Generally what happened was that as soon as you got to the run -off, if Le Pen had gotten to that stage, which in latter years she has done, Everybody who'd voted for any other party, other than the National Assembly, would vote for the other person, regardless of whether they like them personally or not, just to keep the far right out.

One of the unknowns of this election is we have no idea who else would be in that run -off election.Lots of new people are standing.

I mean, really, 32 declared and potential candidates.Before Marine Le Pen's conviction, polls were showing her winning the presidency outright.

And new polling this week, since the verdict was reconfirmed, have her still winning the election.How meaningful is that, when you don't know that much about the people who are standing against her, before the campaign has really been fought?The polls tested her against a number of the named possible alternatives.The one who came closest was former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a centre -right candidate.He got 49 % in that theoretical run -off vote, which is within the margin of error.So it just underlines that if a competent centrist figure did extremely well in the campaign, and Marine Le Pen found in the campaign that questions and commentary about her convictions were hard to brush aside, well, that's it.

could all change.Which is kind of why you have election campaigns.There'd obviously be a massive turn for France, and particularly for the European Union, should a Le Pen presidency come to pass.Much more sceptical of NATO, very much more antagonistic towards the European Union.The continent, which has been busily celebrating getting rid of Viktor Orban, could suddenly find it has something even more transient in one of its own most powerful members, one of the two European powers with their own nuclear weapons.So perhaps inspired by this example, we then come to the case of MAGA -lite Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage.

Farage's party has been styling itself as the next government since it was riding high in the polls last year, even though its current parliamentary party is tiny and some of its leading figures are... on the eccentric side.But Farage has not been enjoying his recent time as a serious political figure with designs on attaining the highest office in the land.Once again, there have been allegations of financial irregularities.Large foreign donations, which came the year before he was elected as a Member of Parliament, which, it seemed clear from the rules and from custom and practice, should have been declared.Namely, an undeclared £5 million gift from a Thai -based crypto -billionaire.But then, let's be honest, which of us haven't accepted those from time to time?

Farage has been increasingly furious at journalists persistently asking him questions about this, and so this week he suddenly declared he would be making an important announcement about his future.Now, everyone who fears what a Farage -led government might do to the United Kingdom dared to hope, dared to dream, that this might be, he'd thought about it, and he'd decided it would be a lot less hassle to just retire and, you know, do all those highly paid speaking gigs in MAGA America.

But no, he declared dramatically he was resigning his seat in Parliament, but purely for the purposes of standing again for re -election in the by -election, where he would urge the voters of Clacton to stand with him as the little guy against the establishment.All these questions about my on -the -side hush money donations.It's the establishment, the deep states, fighting back against the little man because he tells the truth.Blah, blah, blah.Wretch.He had it in mind that he would stand and once again he would handily beat all of his opponents and that, he argued, would mean that those pesky questions should be put to one side.

The people will have spoken.Now there's just two problems with that.One, that's not how allegations of financial impropriety get resolved.Not in the UK.

There's a thing called due process and an assessment of actual evidence against the rules of what should have happened.It'll be very detailed and hence pretty fair.If, as he says, he's done nothing wrong, which is a possibility, then that would be the outcome.taking your slogans about the establishment persecuting you to a mass of people who don't follow the details of any of that and, unlike, say, a jury in a criminal trial, do not get to hear all of the evidence and a detailed argument from both sides.They are not positioned to be the arbiters of that sort of thing.

question.So even if he gets re -elected, those questions and the investigations don't go away.They get paused while the election's going on.But they come back, and if it turns out he broke Commons rules, he could end up with a recall petition against him, meaning a second by -election for those lucky people of Clacton.one with him standing having been officially disgraced.So that's one.

And two, the other political parties are not playing along.

He called a by -election with him as the heroic little guy standing against all the other, the, mutter it darkly, the establishment.Well?

Like Trump demanding that Iran sign up to his deals, those parties have a choice not to play the part.So all the main political parties have just said, this is a gimmick, totally unnecessary by -election at significant cost, we're not going to validate it by standing.So Farage has no mainstream opponents in this by -election.All he has are the joke characters and the occasional single -issue campaign groups that typically exercise their right to stand in by -elections.And particularly, step into the gladiator's ring, Count Binface.

And this is possibly one of the most British things you'll ever come across.Count Binface, a man with a bin on his head, the clues in the name, claiming to be from an alien race, because of course he does, with a policy of things like re -routing the HS2 railway to go through the homes of rail company executives, amongst other things.Normally he just gets to be in the shot at the count, a note of absurdity alongside the victorious successful candidates who can

choose to be irritated at the dissent from dignity, or they can choose to be, or at least pretend to be, tolerantly amused by it.Here's next Prime Minister to be Andy Burnham at his recent by -election victory, letting the aura of the bin infuse his political mission.or something.

Needless to say, lots of people have seized upon this.Rather than Farage all seriously and slightly red in the face with righteous anger, intoning, let the people decide, they're instead saying he's called an unnecessary by -election and as a result, he's going to be spending his summer arguing with a bin.

Ah yes, again, like Trump and Iran, the true multiple -dimension chess champions will know that you aim to carry out forcing moves that give your opponents no choice but to respond in the way that suits your interests.But jumping up and down like a galloping midget and demanding that everyone pay you attention?That's a gambit, but it's one that's easily countermanded by not giving you that attention.The existence of Count Binface is just the icing on the cake.And this has led some to excitingly anticipate that Count Binface could actually win the by -election.Because if everyone who wants to vote against Farage turned out and voted for the man with the bin, then that would surely be the ultimate inhumiliation for the man of the people against the establishment.

I mean, When you look at these two, which of them looks like the anti -establishment candidate to you?That would be great fun, but in the spirit of taking the world as it is, not the way we might wish it to be, let's acknowledge that it's a long shot.Still, never underestimate the nation that responded to a contest to name a new scientific exploration boat they'd like to build.to call it Boaty McBoatface.That does sound like the sort of country that could vote for a Count Binface.Still, at least in the UK, we believe in democracy.

We have Count Binface standing in elections.We don't just, you know, send him to negotiate with Iran or even run the Pentagon.Something to bear in mind.Alright, my thanks as always to the good people who support this channel on Patreon and elsewhere, without whom these videos would not be possible.That's all for now, have a great weekend.