Bahrain: The Tiny Island Playing a Big Role in the Middle East | WSJ Coordinates
Video Overview & Insights
You could say Bahrain punches above its weight: it’s a tiny island nation in the Middle East, but it plays a huge role when it comes to countering Iran, partnering with the U.S. Navy and reshaping the political landscape in the Middle East. I traveled to the capital of Manama to learn more about the small kingdom’s role on the global stage.
What country do you want to see us visit next? My “Coordinates” series is designed to dive into a specific place that’s strategically important to its region and the world. Leave a comment if you have any thoughts!
I’m Shelby Holliday, a reporter for WSJ. Subscribe to join me as I explain some of today's most pressing geopolitical events, from superpower showdowns and conflicts to supply chain snarls and natural resource struggles.
0:00 Bahrain: Small Island, Big Influence
I am so sorry for those ignorant men, too blind to realise they are fighting someone else's war and killing other poor civilians. This is the tragic, historical result of dividi et impera and panem et circenses—tactics designed to keep us disunited and easily controlled. Americans are so embarrassingly egocentric that they would rather pollute and hear "broom broom" than ask for their taxes to be spent on trains instead of guns. They still hail their veterans as heroes—rather than unproductive parasites—simply because CIA propaganda told them so.
We thought humanity learned not to trust American politicians after Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Saddam. Yet, here we are. The UN is too weak against regimes like Maduro or Khamenei, but Western arrogance is not the solution. We created this atmosphere. If people studied history, economics, and politics, they would see that the West is not the world's hero, but the high school bully from 2000s movies. The EU, Japan, and Canada remain mere puppets, and current trade tariffs are making us realise this truth far too slowly.
Wars have never brought justice, only destruction. Poor, desperate men become soldiers to kill other civilians so that rich investors can profit from "rebuilding." Who actually benefited from the deaths of Saddam and Gaddafi? Not the civilians, but the same elites paying billions to sit on boards and invest in luxury buildings in Gaza.
We are not innocent. It is human laziness to stay uninformed, allowing greed and arrogance to dominate. This macro-crisis is reflected in our daily micro-behaviors: we no longer discuss, we do not confront friends who evade taxes, we avoid telling strangers not to pollute due to "political correctness," and we fail to challenge our parents for voting without being informed. We ignore the root causes of systemic issues because politicians want us to remain superficial.
I hoped GenZ would spark global change, but they cannot do much if geopolitical violence continues. It is ironic that Americans love media like Fallout but learn nothing from it because they are too lazy to reflect on what they consume.
Journalists have confirmed what was previously censored: it made no sense for Russia to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline. Yet, Europe keeps its eyes closed. Who truly benefits from modern escalation and increased military spending? Not the citizens, but European military companies meeting shareholder expectations and a US government pushing for defense growth to distract from domestic crises and the German recession. Meanwhile, European politics has abandoned diplomacy, forcing us to buy Russian gas indirectly from India and the USA at heavily inflated prices.
Suspending Russian gas imports was blatant self-sabotage to favor the US. For ten years, the West did nothing to calm the situation or halt NATO expansion, an alliance whose utility ended in 1991. If you constantly provoke a dog, you cannot be surprised when it bites. Since 1991, NATO has threatened Russia—even refusing its past requests to join—and its founding structures involved former Nazi generals. Anyone leading a country surrounded by an expanding military alliance would lose patience; look no further than the US reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There is no black-and-white truth. After decades of ignored diplomacy, escalation was inevitable. The solution is not to eliminate dialogue, but to dismantle NATO and integrate both Ukraine and Russia—under new, free elections—into the EU, while drastically strengthening the UN.
Now, the public is cheering for AI companies. They claim AI is progress, but it is bad: it will eliminate countless jobs and careers, consume massive amounts of energy, drive up electricity costs, and heavily pollute the planet. Yet, too many ignorant people praise it simply because we are lazy and find it convenient. Saying otherwise is a luxury that makes people feel free and guiltless. Blaming billionaires alone is cheap demagogy used by influencers to gain followers who want to feel validated in doing absolutely nothing. [1, 2]
Taxing billionaires will not stop companies from polluting if your friends and family keep buying new stuff every single week from Amazon or Temu, or buying a new phone just to look cool when their current one works perfectly. They drive their cars for every short trip just to "feel free," entirely brainwashed by Hollywood. Even those who think they are helping are victims of propaganda if they believe just recycling will save anything. Once an object is created, you have already polluted. We must maximise the use of what we buy: re-using comes before recycling.
We must tax billionaires more, yes, but then what? Without global action, they will just flee. We must first fight together to drastically strengthen the UN so billionaires have nowhere left to hide their wealth.
There is so much more to confront. There are too many people demanding welfare while just as many refuse it entirely. There are too many individuals glorifying unproductive soldiers who fight for corporate profits while wasting tax-funded military budgets.
Blaming elites is cheap demagogy. This failure belongs to us, our parents, and our silence. We complain about oil companies, but we do not confront friends who refuse public transport or bikes. Democracy has been emptied of meaning because half the population does not vote, and the other half does so uninformed or disinterested. What do you say to the friend who doesn't vote? What do you say to the person who blindly argues about right-wing or left-wing politics without acknowledging that the entire system is corrupted?
It will always stay the same until the population cares enough to fight. We only know how to complain without doing anything concrete. Everything is up to us. Stop being passive: start talking with your family and friends, make them outraged, and start fighting.
0:28 Global Security and Countering Iran
1:47: The Abraham Accords and Middle East Peace
praying for the citizens of the gulf countries rn
3:20: Attracting Tourists and Investment
#Bahrain #Coordinates #ShelbyHolliday
Half the video you are talking about israel 😂
More User Perspectives
You will find a US military base wherever there’s oil
@darlingtonmachilar6745Care for any “ bringing democracy to Bahrain “ 😂😂
@seahaws1If ur gonna talk about a country at least try to say the name in the right pronunciation 😑
@safaali9019WSJ did this piece not for Bahrain rather for Israel 😂
@xtasy6291Free Palestine
@CY-ye5dzGo Navy
@jackkhammysing3403The problem is us military there
@user-cn7rd8cx9sWho brokered the Abraham Acvords? You can't make yourself say it, can you?
@LanceThompsonKssoonerShaikh Nasser Arrives at the Bahrain Pavilion, Russian Forum | SPIEF 2025, 20th June 4K Exclusive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Qcb62SPSc&t=41s
@TVDATAAmazing Bahrain! 😍
@jo_trvel_wrldYou could say 0% corporate tax and that’s a big thing for its location
@alamroXمن الجهة الشرقيةمملكة البحرين❌
@مقلزThe Palestinians are facing the same fate as the Native Americans in 1900s
Allahu Akbar Allah is the greatest
Bismillah Hir rahman nir raheem
Jerusalem is the Eternal capital of Palestine 🇵🇸😍❤😊😊
Allahu Akbar Allah is the greatest
Bismillah Hir rahman nir raheem
From river to the sea Palestine 🇵🇸 will be free 🇵🇸
Security or something else?? Typical colonial theory...
@bhaskarroy6760God, I do pray for deliverance from wickedness and from evilness. Thank you for abounding grace. Thank you for healing all legal and financial troubles and difficulties In Jesus mighty name. Amen 🙏 🤍
@Rebecca-zr3luUS is as always supporting monarchs and working against Democracy and will of the people of Bahrain 😂 while teach human rights to others
@raheelhaider9295Bahrain sold its soul to the West for profits 🤦🏿♂️
@sharmarizle21No Need to flex the Prada 0:40
@karanrana7874Thd role is : making people worldwide being aware to study about mathematics , 90 + 6 = 99
@kindness0808To much quality boom boom and every night
@diorocks5858the wall street Jewrnal.
50% of this video is about the so called relationship with israhell, which no bahraini shares, like zero.
What a waste of time
Not a single bahraini likes israel 😂
@fakelakaLakafake-pv4ydArabian Gulf and not Persian gulf
@66WAJAIt's only little agent to American in the region no more
@livman17As an Iranian i'm glad it didn't return to Iran, it would be left empty if it did, i will visit bahrain one day 🇮🇷🇧🇭
@TimeStrangerDigimonTo bad Bahrain is friendly with isfake
@Jer_22_mOpen minded country
@woodyjencanete8857Respect Morocco integrity
@MadujfjdvehdjI was station in Bahrain back in 05 and 06 when I was in the navy and I really enjoy being there
@gardinerb2While the Middle East is progressing, Kuwait is evolving just backwards 😂
@Trostat2 Let Satan and his children have pastoral schools, Bible institutes and the Internet, me and my house will stay with the prophetic revelation. [Ed: The congregation says: "Amen!"]. And after pastoral school, seminaries and theological degrees, when those hypocrites, sons of the devil stand in the pulpit, they say: "O God may I decrease and you speak through me." You see? It's a confusion! If you know that you can decrease for God to speak through you, so what did you go and look for in pastoral schools?
42 If you are a child of God and you do not see the words: "precursor of the antichrist" on the forehead of these church presidents, then you are in the darkness. I do not look at myself as a prophet but I know one thing: I saw written in the Heaven the judgment of God upon you and no one can contradict that. And the sons of the devil keep at a distance and say: "What you say is true, but God revealed that to us too!" If God has really revealed that to you, it’s not to another church but to his Word and to his Church that you will come...
1 Well, this morning I would like to talk about the subject: Has God really said? Notice Genesis 3:1-6 well. First, in Genesis 2:16 and 17, God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eve was not there and it is Adam who preached it to her. But when the serpent came, it is towards her that he went. The serpent and Eve chatted for a while and tackled the subject of the sex sin in order to commit adultery with her. The serpent talked to her about sexual relation and they committed adultery, and blood flowed from before Eve and brought curse upon the earth. That is why it was blood that Abel presented and at the end of times, the Lord Jesus-Christ presented His own blood which is the most precious blood, and that blotted out the sin of all the elect from generation to generation, as well as mine, I, Prophet Kacou Philippe, that speak to you. [Ed: The congregation says, “Amen!”] [Kc.23v7]
2 Thus, in the beginning, it was through sex that the curse touched the earth. And you have no right to sleep with a woman that you have not married at her parents’. [Ed: The congregation says, “Amen!”]. Satan was well aware of this but see his reaction: Satan said: “What? God said: Ye shall not eat?". God had said in verse 17 of Genesis 2: "For in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die". But the serpent said in Genesis 3:4: "Ye will not certainly die". And that is what people do not understand today. No matter the truth that can come out of the mouth of a Catholic, Protestant, evangelical and Branhamist leader, the problem is that he is not the prophet of the generation and he is not the one to whom you must listen. [Ed: The congregation says, “Amen!”]. And that was Eve’s error. Finally, Eve doubted and ate of it, and her eyes opened and she had many dreams and visions like a prophet, a God. And what happened in the beginning, that is what will happen at the end of times.
#ProphetKacouPhilippe
O God of my fathers the prophets, thank you for this great good that You have done to this generation and if You will, allow me to walk on the lands of Africa and the whole world and let their waters and creeks and their rivers rejoice together with their sister, the Nile on the prophetic path dancing towards Egypt with both arms raised to heaven, holding Lake Victoria in one hand and Lake Tana in the other hand. And let their waters transmit this joy from place to place up to the Red Sea in Egypt and let lands and trees and animals and birds also rejoice together. And that in my time also, the sons and daughters of men on the entire earth may see with their own eyes, for the first time, a true prophet like those of the Bible walking on the earth as in the days of old. For it is in your name Jesus Christ that I, Kacou Philippe, your slave, I ask. Amen.
1 Like the prophets of the Bible, in April 1993, I, Kacou Philippe, a man who had never been in a church, I receive in a vision, the visitation of an Angel who commissions me for a Message destined to the whole earth in fulfillment of Matthew 25:6 and Revelation 12:14. This is the account of my conversion, as well as the three great visions of the call and commission as I received them:
2 I came to conversion on April 24, 1993 according to Daniel 10:4 to 11 by a vision in which I saw myself standing on the sand of the sea and then on top of a high pyramid and then again on the sand of the sea in another place and I saw an old military truck coming out of the depths of the sea and leave behind me. I turned and I saw that it contained living people. They were women and one of them was mixed-race.
3 Then two doves came toward me and went back over the waters. And there was an eclipse, then a man having the appearance of a Cloud and holding a sword came down from Heaven with a Lamb and the earth was illuminated again. They stood on the waters and the Lamb began to speak to me in an unknown tongue. The sound of his voice came into me and I fell dead. My soul went to stand on the waters with them while my body was lying on the sand of the sea. When He had finished speaking to me, my soul came into me and I became alive again but I no longer saw Them.
The World prophet
@koffiarmandkouassi546115 Apart from the true Church led by a living prophet,the only church which talks about the Kingdom of the Heavens and which talks about the keys of the Kingdom of Heavens as still being on the earth is the Roman Catholicchurch. All the statues of Peter in the Vatican present him holding some keys. And you have seen some images of popes of Rome holding a bunch of the same keys the lord Jesus Christ had given to Peter because this churchknows that the keys of the Kingdom of Heavens must be on earth with a man. You see? Pay close attention to every belief of the beginning of the Catholicchurch and you will see that it had tried the true thing! Today, from among all the churches, the Branhamists included, the Catholic church is the closest to thefoundations of the truth.They could have simply accepted that in sovereignty, God can raise this prophet messenger out from the Catholic church. But they didn’t accept that.
#ProphetKacouPhilippe
21 They come from the East and West, North and South under the supervision of the holy angels! They come at the pace of the midnight Cry! Their heart and their soul hate sin! Their language is not street language! They are virgin, they cannot sin! They come forth to meet the Bridegroom, the Holy of holies! And in their hand, no cigarette, no alcohol, no false hair upon their head, no trousers, no nail varnish and lipstick…
#ProphetKacouPhilippe
1 Like the prophets of the Bible, in April 1993, I, Kacou Philippe, a man who had never been in a church, I receive in a vision, the visitation of an Angel who commissions me for a Message destined to the whole earth in fulfillment of Matthew 25:6 and Revelation 12:14. This is the account of my conversion, as well as the three great visions of the call and commission as I received them:
2 I came to conversion on April 24, 1993 according to Daniel 10:4 to 11 by a vision in which I saw myself standing on the sand of the sea and then on top of a high pyramid and then again on the sand of the sea in another place and I saw an old military truck coming out of the depths of the sea and leave behind me. I turned and I saw that it contained living people. They were women and one of them was mixed-race.
3 Then two doves came toward me and went back over the waters. And there was an eclipse, then a man having the appearance of a Cloud and holding a sword came down from Heaven with a Lamb and the earth was illuminated again. They stood on the waters and the Lamb began to speak to me in an unknown tongue. The sound of his voice came into me and I fell dead. My soul went to stand on the waters with them while my body was lying on the sand of the sea. When He had finished speaking to me, my soul came into me and I became alive again but I no longer saw Them.
4 Then a crowd of people came toward me from the right side and I asked them if they had seen the Angel and the Lamb. They said, "No!" And I said: “But, how did you not see the Angel and the Lamb and all the things They have done?” They replied, "We have not seen the Angel and the Lamb and we have not heard the Words the Lamb pronounced, but we entirely believe It because what God gave and that the devil took, has now been restituted to you ". I looked up and I saw a ladder set up between the sky and the earth, above the waters and angels ascended and descended. And the vision ended and I felt what I know today to be the Holy Spirit and I wept and I believed in God on the spot. [Kc.64v3] [Kc.130v9]
5 The following day at around 3 p.m. while I was sitting with my family, I was transported again in vision into a totally desert country and I saw eastward Words that were coming down from Heaven carried on Clouds. It was after these two visions that I got up and went to church for the very first time. [Kc.137v37]
6 In a third vision, we were sitting in an examination room for the Advanced level test and the examiner was distributing the test-papers. I said to myself, "But what am I doing here? I do not have a good school level and what am I going to write?” And later, It was said to me: "The same way that Mary conceived miraculously, without knowing any man, the same way that Moses received in details what happened at the creation, you too, you have received the Words of eternal Life on this April 24, 1993 and it is decreed by God. At the appointed time, you will understand and you will teach what you did not learn in order that whoever believes has eternal Life". [Kc.9v34] [Kc.30v1-3]
40 You brethren of Africa, of Asia, of Europe and of America! Maybe you were expecting the Message of Matthew 25:6 in your country, but God did it another way. Remember our Lord Jesus Christ! Being the high priest Melchisedec, the rabbis and the scribes saw that He should come from the tribe of Levi. But He came out of the tribe of Judah. Then, His Message and his works confirmed that it was Him the Messiah. And today, on the whole face of the earth, if you are a child of God, your place, it is here with the prophet of your time, Prophet Kacou Philippe. And he that has ears to hear, let him hear.
@bletv613012 And if God saves a Catholic, a Protestant, an evangelical, a Branhamist or one member of those missions and ministries, God must remove hell and everyone will go to the Paradise, even Satan. [Ed: The congregation says, “Amen!”]. How can someone reject the living prophet of his time and go to the Paradise? How can someone be saved from the Flood while he has rejected Noah? When the Lord Jesus Christ was on earth, how could someone reject Him and be saved? The whole earth is in the abyss because of these churches. [Kc.2v11] [Kc.31v18] [Kc.91v6]
@djedjejulienbouabre-vw9nd12 And if God saves a Catholic, a Protestant, an evangelical, a Branhamist or one member of those missions and ministries, God must remove hell and everyone will go to the Paradise, even Satan. [Ed: The congregation says, “Amen!”]. How can someone reject the living prophet of his time and go to the Paradise? How can someone be saved from the Flood while he has rejected Noah? When the Lord Jesus Christ was on earth, how could someone reject Him and be saved? The whole earth is in the abyss because of these churches. [Kc.2v11] [Kc.31v18] [Kc.91v6]
@djedjejulienbouabre-vw9nd11 Well, the second question is: "Brother Philippe, can a man be saved outside of the Message that you preach?"The answer is: No! That is not possible. And Brother Okobé had tried to show that rightly. You see? I am going to read Acts 10 first, I am going to show you two verses there. Then another verse in chapter 11.
@gerardallany-om7ob7 NOW WHAT DOES THIS MESSAGE OF THE LAMB SAY? This Message says that we are no longer in the evening time but at midnight. However, it is the same age and the same Spirit of Elijah, but a "New" Message which is a high scope of the one of the evening time. Zechariah 14:7 is therefore different from Matthew 25:6.
@kouakoubernabekoffi208017 The Message of a dead prophet cannot save anyone. That is why the Lord Jesus had said: "While ye have the light, believe, that ye may become sons of light." John 12:36. And also: "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." John 9:5. "As long as" means "In this precise moment". And for eighteen years I cried out that one cannot be saved by following a religion, a holy book, or a dead prophet. All of you who are alive today, if you have not believed in me, then as soon as my death is announced, know that you will all go to hell. One cannot be saved in a religion or in the Message of a dead prophet. One cannot be disciple of a dead prophet. One day after my death, no man can say again, "Kacou Philippe is my prophet".
@kouassilouisferdinandkouak4932