The following remarks were delivered during the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable, “The Iran War and the ‘Controlled Disintegration’ of the World Economy.” A detailed overview of the event, which included high-level speakers from around the world, is available here. Helga Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute and editor-in-chief of EIR magazine. Subheads have been added. The video is available here.

Hello to all of you, dear ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, and friends. The reason why we convoked this EIR Roundtable special seminar today in coincidence with the IPC [International Peace Coalition] meeting, is because obviously we have arrived at a very crucial strategic crossroads, and humanity can go in either one of two fundamentally different directions.

There is a hopeful one. I think that was hinted at in the state visit of President Trump in China, where he was warmly received by President Xi Jinping, and they agreed to improve the relationship among the two largest economies in the world, working to their mutual benefit, and solving all problems through negotiations and diplomacy, guided by Xi Jinping’s conception that we have a shared future of mankind, and that we have only one future as a human species.

The other one is the path of escalation, which in the very short term could lead to a global nuclear war and the annihilation of the human species. It is very clear that if the unprovoked war of aggression against Iran is going to continue, that we are facing the danger of the whole world economy plunging into a deep depression, leading to chaos and, potentially, a dark age. I should also mention that there is also the policy of the “Coalition of the Willing,” basically saying the war with Russia is inevitable, but that is a separate feature of today’s discussion.

Now, the Pentagon says that the cost of the first 60 days of the war was $25 billion. We calculated that the actual cost is more than 100 times that, namely $4 trillion, if you count everything—the military cost, the energy price, the fertilizer price, the reduction in production, in industrial and agricultural output, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and assets.

Where Do We Go from Here?

So, where do we go from here? First of all, the United States and Israel have not accomplished [even] one of the goals which they have set. They have not succeeded in decapitating the Iranian leadership; they have not eliminated the ballistic missile capability; and they have not been able to cut the link to the forces of resistance. The whole world is not missing this point, that the strongest military force on Earth was not able to defeat a middle-sized country. Also, the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before, is now basically under the control of Iran, which has set up a toll-booth system.

So, the options that we are looking at now are the following: First, if the United States keeps the blockade against Iran, the time factor works very clearly against the United States, because Iran will be more resilient. Trump is already losing his own MAGA base, and he has to think about the upcoming midterm election. Therefore, this is not to the advantage of Trump. The Wall Street Journal proposes a second option, namely, to have a continuation of the blockade, as well as resuming the bombing. Now, in all likelihood, Iran would be able to withstand such a situation. According to even Western media reports, Iran still has 90% of its missile sites, while the U.S. arsenal is almost depleted. Eleven hundred long-range stealth cruise missiles have been deployed, and that is almost the total supply of what the United States had. One thousand Tomahawk missiles have been used, which is about 10 times what the Pentagon is able to produce per year. They even had to divert weapons from Asia, which obviously weakens the focus on the Pacific—which, according to various doctrines, was the priority.

Now, there is also the possibility that Iran, if the bombing resumes, will retaliate. That will have enormous costs, not only for the U.S. bases in the region but also in the countries which are hosting those U.S. bases, whose business model in any case has been, if not totally destroyed, severely damaged. The third option is that Trump will try to get a deal with Iran, which is probably in his interest, because Trump is looking for an off-ramp. But that goes against the fact that both the Israelis and the Israel lobby in the United States do not want a deal with Iran under any circumstances, because they regard Iran, for reasons true or not, as an existential threat to Israel. However, there is a discussion right now in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and also in the intelligence services in Israel, that the present policies, if continued, represent a very real threat to the existence of Israel.

We should also consider that while Trump is now sounding more peaceful, only a few weeks ago he did threaten the complete annihilation of the entire Iranian civilization. In any case, if option one or two would be pursued, the danger is that the world economy would plunge into a depression, which would lead to famine, chaos, and a dark age like the 14th Century. And already, the UN’s World Food Programme is saying that as a result of the war, 45 million more people are in acute hunger than before. This is why we strongly, strongly want to put the idea of a new security and development architecture on the table which must take into account the interest of every single country on the planet, in order to succeed.

Now, the danger is that, if you look at the situation in Iran, if it escalates, there is the danger of the use of nuclear weapons. The fact is that the “Coalition of the Willing” and the Anglo-Americans have already assisted Ukraine in crossing red lines against Russia. The first time was the territorial invasion in Kursk; the second time, in the attack on one leg of the strategic triad of Russia; and the third time, when they attempted a decapitation [strike] against President Putin by attacking his residence. This last action was denied by the Western media, but Russia has provided video materials proving the case; to which Russian analyst and strategic expert Karaganov has answered, proposing that Russia should use a couple of nuclear weapons against the Europeans so that they remember the fact that Russia is the strongest nuclear power on the planet.

So, if you take these two immediate dangers—And there is no such thing in my view, contrary to what Karaganov is saying, as a limited nuclear war. The eminent expert Dr. Ted Postol has declared in many presentations why the use of only one nuclear weapon, within a matter of five days, would lead to a global nuclear war. This is why we think that the world must move in a completely different direction and put a new paradigm on the table that is in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia; that you have to consider the interest of the other, and in this case, of all others.

Peace Through Development

Now, the concept we propose is peace through development. This is an old idea, which was first promoted by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical of 1967, Populorum Progressio, which says that every nation must be allowed to fulfill its entire interest. I have proposed Ten Principles for how such a discussion could be taken into account. It is essentially making the World Land-Bridge the concept of development for all continents. For Africa, it would mean joint investments by the West and the BRICS countries into the development of Africa, according to the Africa 2063 plan. And we propose the Extended Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia, because if you look at the map of Southwest Asia, you will see that it is all desert. Therefore, we propose an approach to take the entire region from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Gulf, and build a system of canals, starting with a canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea; use space technology to find underground lakes and aquifers; use the ionization of the atmosphere [to induce cloud formation and rainfall]; and essentially replicate what China just a few days ago published with a spectacular video called “How China Turned Barren Desert into Massive Farmland Producing Millions of Tons of Food.” We will make the link to this video available. It basically shows the spectacular transformation of Xinjiang and the northwest of China into farmland, into forests, into orchards, producing 30 million tons of food.

We propose a system of corridors connecting the existing CPEC corridor from China to Pakistan, and the [International] North-South Transport Corridor from St. Petersburg to India, and connect it from Iran to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and finally Egypt, and that way make Southwest Asia again the hub between Asia and Africa and Europe, as it used to be during the time of the ancient Silk Road.

Now, we want to campaign for this program, because it appeals to what Dr. Naledi Pandor [South Africa’s Foreign Minister, 2019-2024] once called “the adults in the room” in all nations, and it does require a change in attitude of thinking. We have to abandon the idea of geopolitics, the idea that there is a legitimate interest of one nation or group of nations against another group of nations, and we have to replace that with love for mankind, without which I think we will not be able to come out of this crisis.

But since we are the only creative species known in the universe so far, and therefore capable of thinking in terms of the Coincidence of Opposites of [15th-Century Catholic Cardinal] Nikolaus of Cusa, we can recognize that the only way we will be able to get out of this crisis, is to recognize that the “one” has a higher magnitude than the “many.” The One Humanity is more important than the local national interest of groups, and that we can actually, by acting forcefully and courageously, change the destiny of history in a better direction for a shared future of humanity.