The Lead
Déjà Vu Approaches in Southwest Asia—Time for a New Plan for Peace and Security
by Stewart Battle (EIRNS) — Jan. 31, 2026
Over seven months ago, The LaRouche Organization published a prescient statement on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump’s June 22, 2025 air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. While many Western media parroted Trump’s claim that the Iranian sites were “obliterated” and that he had secured “peace,” the LaRouche statement posed the following question: “If the sites were not destroyed, or if Iran announces it is able to rebuild, what will happen then? Will the use of tactical nuclear weapons be the next step?” Now, seven months later, either through manipulation or imperial arrogance, Trump has allowed himself to be boxed into a corner from which some kind of disastrous military action is likely to result.
While the outcome of the current flurry of rhetoric and increasing military hardware swirling around Iran is not known, the geometry of the situation remains the same. Even if a tactical nuclear weapon isn’t used, any escalation in this region would easily become a much larger conflict, reaching far beyond its borders, and would guarantee future conflict here for years to come—if the world even survives it.
However, in those intervening seven months, Trump has walked himself into yet more crises, foreshadowing even greater disasters. In less than one week, the New START Treaty expires, and the United States has refused to respond to Russia’s offer to extend the treaty for one year. This will leave the world’s two nuclear-weapons superpowers with no remaining agreements for the regulation of their nuclear weapons arsenals for the first time in over 50 years. But there’s more. Pavel Sharikov, a researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences posed whether Trump’s rejection of the Russian offer is motivated by the desire to strengthen the U.S. nuclear deterrent. “Trump has already announced plans for a Golden Dome missile defense system, and his ambitions to acquire Greenland fit into this trend,” Sharikov noted. Is this part of the new U.S. National Security Strategy to stand up to America’s “adversaries?”
This is not to mention the barbaric actions against Venezuela, and increasingly now, Cuba, which appears will be given the Gaza treatment following the imposition of an oil embargo last week, despite outcries from around the world. Or the inhuman practices of ICE agents as seen in Minnesota and other cities, which are now causing a significant blowback from within the American population. Both of these evince a brutal outlook toward mankind as a whole—a worldview that is the enemy of sovereign nations and free peoples.
No matter how much “force” or “strength” is applied to these various crisis points, it will never lead to their resolution. The history of human civilization has shown that it is only when new and qualitatively more truthful ideas are realized, that nations and peoples have overcome their prevailing crises to establish a new platform of existence.
It is this type of creative and impassioned approach that is required to solve the major crisis epitomized by the New START Treaty, for example, and take the world off the precipice of nuclear confrontation. That will be the subject of a Feb. 5 press conference hosted by Independent candidate for President Diane Sare, who will be joined by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Sare said of the event: “I worked for many years with American former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, who was the author of the much-misunderstood ‘Strategic Defense Initiative.’ The SDI, as LaRouche conceived of it, was not at all like the unworkable ‘Golden Dome’ currently proposed by the Trump Administration, but was designed to be a science-driver joint endeavor of the United States and the Soviet Union to develop a defensive system that would supersede nuclear weapons. LaRouche was the back-channel for President Reagan on this policy, which was strongly opposed by those such as George H.W. Bush and James Baker III, who wished to continue the Churchillian Cold War division of the world.”
“I believe we need an entirely new strategic and security architecture, as President Putin has said repeatedly, and this dangerous moment of crisis could become the opportunity to establish a new standard of relations. That would be the appropriate action for an American President at this time,” Sare concluded.
So take a deep breath and organize for the kinds of creative solutions that will actually work to rescue mankind from this current disastrous state.
Contents
Strategic War Danger
- Russian Views on the Expiration of New START (↓)
- U.S. Not Welcome To Use Saudi Airspace for Attacking Iran (↓)
- Trump Says Only Iran Knows Timeline for U.S. Strikes (↓)
- Putin Talks about Iran Crisis at the Kremlin (↓)
- Russia and China Reject Trump's Plan To Strangle Cuba (↓)
- European Stability Mechanism To Fund Rearmament of Eurozone (↓)
Collapsing Imperial System
- Trump's Board of Peace Getting Lukewarm Response (↓)
- Mexico’s Sheinbaum Warns, Trump's EO Will Cause Grave Humanitarian Crisis in Cuba (↓)
