The Lead

A Chorus of Reason Can Defeat the Minority for War

by Stewart Battle (EIRNS) — Mar. 27, 2026

As the Iran War continues to play out, it has revealed fundamental and irrevocable cracks in today’s global order. Iran continues to defy the illegal and unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war, launched at the height of negotiations, with no indication that it is on the brink of collapsing. Reporting by the New York Times found that Iran has now caused many of America’s more than a dozen military bases in the region to become “uninhabitable,” while the economic damage inflicted by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz seems only to be just beginning. In addition, simple calculations show that Iran’s ability to produce offensive attacks on American and Israeli locations in the region are far outweighed by the costs to defend them, on top of the declining missile interceptor stocks available, meaning the longer the conflict goes on the more exposed those nations will be.

But there is also the moral and civilizational crack emerging, wherein the self-anointed “defenders of democracy” have resorted to the most brutal and barbaric methods to accomplish their aims. Lying about diplomatic negotiations to cover for a preemptive strike; bombing schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure; condoning Israel’s announcement to give Lebanon the “Gaza treatment” as it begins its ground invasion there—all while defending the criminal members of the Epstein class. It is this crack in the perceived legitimacy and morality of the Western-centered world order that will have the most far-reaching implications, for years and decades to come.

On March 26, after a particularly bad day for the oil and stock markets, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an extension on the pause for strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure until April 6. He said this, while at the same time insisting negotiations with Iran are ongoing, and that “they are going very well.” This is already an unconvincing argument given this administration’s penchant to use the cloak of negotiations to prepare military strikes, and the fact that multiple thousands of American troops are currently on their way to the region, presumably for an Iranian ground invasion. However, later in the day on March 27, Israel began a massive attack on Iranian steel factories, power plants, and nuclear power facilities, in an apparent betrayal of Trump’s extended moratorium. If Iran perceives this as a new escalation in the war, and decides to respond in kind by hitting energy, industrial, and nuclear facilities across Israel and the Gulf States, this conflict can quickly spiral out of control to a catastrophic level of destruction—up to and including nuclear war.

After reviewing the current strategic situation during Friday’s meeting of the International Peace Coalition on March 27, Helga Zepp-LaRouche said: “This is why we should not just observe the situation and analyze it... We should escalate the situation to try to put the alternative on the table.” In reality, today’s crisis is a manifestation of Samuel Huntington’s evil “Clash of Civilization” dogma, proposed after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s to replace the enemy image of Communism with that of Islam. The only alternative to this depraved view of your fellow man is that proposed by former Iranian President Khatami’s idea for a “Dialogue of Civilization,” which he proposed around 2000 in order to create the basis for peace between all nations on Earth. “It is high time that we revive this idea,” Zepp-LaRouche said, warning that nuclear-armed madmen are otherwise bringing the planet toward doom.

This kind of outlook demands an economic dimension as well—the Oasis Plan of high-technology water and energy development of the region as a whole. “In ancient times, this region was the place of the ancient Silk Road, and at that time it was the hub for connecting the three continents through trade, exchange of science, of technology, of art, of ideas, of philosophy. And that is what that region can become again,” she said. We must increase the chorus of those calling for this kind of peaceful development as the alternative to endless war.

The cracks which have opened to expose the moral bankruptcy of today’s ruling elites are growing wider by the day. Now is the time for a growing chorus of reason to shift the tide. This topic will be the focus of an upcoming EIR international roundtable event on April 6. Stay tuned.