Where this was said
28 Countries, One Funeral: The Isolation Strategy That Backfired
At 9:36 · chapter starts 7:00
With a granular list of attending nations — Turkey, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia, Afghanistan, Oman, Qatar, and many more — Meiselas makes the case that the funeral functioned as a referendum on Iran's global standing. The goal of the Trump-Netanyahu campaign was to isolate Iran; instead, countries that had been kept at arm's length sent their top dignitaries. Meiselas points out that killing the Ayatollah — who was the Shia world's equivalent of the Pope — turned him into a martyr and unified not just Iranians domestically but Shia communities across Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen. He argues the intelligence community understood this dynamic and tried to warn Trump, but Netanyahu's framing — '24 hours, they'll welcome us as heroes' — overrode it. He draws a sharp contrast: Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton all pushed back against Netanyahu's pressure to escalate against Iran; Trump embraced it. [1] — Ben Meiselas "Official delegations from Turkey, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and dozens more showed up for Khomeini's funeral. Th…" 07:30
Official delegations from Turkey, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and dozens more showed up for Khomeini's funeral. The U.S.-Israeli strategy was to isolate Iran — instead, it engineered one of the most striking displays of Iranian international solidarity in decades.
Official delegations attended from Turkey, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and dozens of other nations, underscoring Iran's global standing.
Netanyahu tried the same playbook with Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton — and they all pushed back. Trump listened, deployed troops, and is now staring at the consequences. The intelligence community knew the risks and tried to communicate them; Trump chose to believe Hegseth and Rubio instead.
Trump told Axios the mourning might be fake and mused that the U.S. could have struck all of Iran's leadership at the funeral in 'one shot.' Both statements reveal how badly Trump misread Iranian society — and how dangerous that misreading still is.
