HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello and welcome to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute. This is your chance to send your questions and comments to her via email, Facebook.org, or post them on the chat page. Today is May 6, 2026. I’m Harley Schlanger and I’ll be your host.
Let me set the stage here, Helga, because it’s a fairly dramatic moment. We’re in the midst of a highly dangerous situation. There’s a fragile ceasefire in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians are presenting a new set of points for negotiation, while President Trump is making it clear that he expects them to submit to his demands or face a new round of attacks. His ally Israel continues to violate terms of the ceasefire with brutal attacks in southern Lebanon.
Ukraine, with full support from NATO, is launching drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure and even into residential areas of Moscow. And Zelenskyy has warned that Ukraine may target the annual Russian May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. And there’s an ongoing strategic discussion between Japan and other Asian nations about containing China.
Now, from this brief survey, we can see that there’s lip service being paid to seeking diplomatic solutions, but the real intent appears to be permanent war. Given this, do you think there remains a chance for diplomacy? And what must be done for diplomacy to succeed?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think that if the countries who are generally concerned about the condition of the world would get together and act together, they would clearly represent the majority and have enough weight to be heard. Because this whole geopolitical game only functions because the mass media in the Western countries have mainly the NATO narrative, and are not reporting what the concern is of the Global South countries, for example. So it has been my argument for quite some time that if the countries of the Global South would recognize that, the attempt to go after them one by one is aimed to weaken the impact of their acting together.
And I think it’s really an extremely urgent time that the tensions which exist, for example, in the BRICS right now, mainly because of the role of India, which is being obviously pulled in all directions. If they would simply recognize that at this moment, the unity of the global majority is an absolutely crucial element; if there is any hope for the Western countries to come to the negotiation table, hopefully they would do it. So that’s why we are trying to encourage people so that they understand that we are really, as you say, in an extremely dangerous situation.
And it’s foolish for people to think that this can continue forever, because, you know, we’re sitting on a powder keg of a potential financial blowout of the system. We are looking at the consequence of the $4 trillion in damage which has already been done by this war against Iran. The Pentagon talks about $25 billion; but if you count all the different elements—the harvests, the fuel price, the bankruptcies and insolvencies as a result of it—we counted all together a figure of $4 trillion which this war has caused so far. And the impact of some of these things will only be felt within the next three months, because, you know, that’s the time it takes for these ships to arrive at their destination.
So we are looking at real devastation in poorer countries. You know, many poor people are already really feeling it very badly, and if this continues, the danger of even famines or the escalation of already existing famines cannot be ignored. So I think the illusion people may have is that since the big catastrophe has not yet happened, that things will continue like that forever. But I think if you look at it from a historical point of view, one can clearly determine the point when it was too late to stop World War I and when it was too late to stop World War II. And I think we are in such a pre-war situation, where fateful events could happen more quickly than anybody thinks. And therefore, I think the need to go to a New Paradigm is more urgent than ever.
SCHLANGER: Now, I have three people who wrote basically the same question, which I think shows the growth of our influence and the attacks directed against you and our organization. But I’ll summarize these questions like this. The LaRouche organization seemed to be backing Trump during his first term, but now seems to be lining up with his liberal Democratic opponents. What happened and why did you switch?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I don’t know why you would think that. I mean, we have been very vocal in warning against the Biden administration, where at the end there was a poll in the Pentagon which said that 50% of the people thought that the policies of the administration were risking nuclear war or the use of nuclear weapons, but then that was somehow acceptable. So under no circumstances are we backing the liberal opponents of Trump. But if you don’t recognize that the promise which Trump made when he started his second term, that he would be the peace President, has been utterly turned into a farce, then you are not in the real universe.
SCHLANGER: Here’s another interesting question of that sort. “There are news reports of disagreements within Trump circles in the administration over the decision to go to war with Iran and to continue the war. Given the LaRouche organization’s record for successful intelligence, do you know which officials oppose this war of choice and what can we do to organize support for them?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I don’t know the names of such people in the present administration. What is known, however, is that many military people resigned from their positions, and that there is a growing opposition in the MAGA base. As a matter of fact, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was one of the strongest supporters Trump had, said MAGA is dead and Trump killed it. Now, these are pretty strong words, but I unfortunately cannot see how Trump is coming back to the position he held when he started the second term. I think there is too much water under the bridge, and he seems to be under the control of the neo-cons, because to start the unprovoked war of aggression against Iran is a watershed. And since I cannot see how he can remedy that, I think, frankly, the Trump administration has lost its vitality, and I don’t know how it can be remedied. If there would be a strong opposition within the MAGA base who would have some kind of influence, maybe it would work, but I don’t see it at this point. So, it looks really grim.
This is why the whole idea of an independent candidate movement is gaining traction. Because the problem in the United States is that it is not a republic anymore, and I think this has been made blatantly clear by King Charles with his watershed speech, which unfortunately was exactly in line with what Trump had said; namely incorporating the American Revolution into the British Empire. I mean, this was a travesty. And the fact that the entire Congress, both sides of the aisle, stood up there 11 times giving Charles a standing ovation, I mean, that basically means there is no thinking person in the Congress right now. Both parties are obviously controlled at the top by what some people call the permanent bureaucracy or the Deep State or whatever you want to call it, but by what Ray McGowan calls the MICIMATT, the military-industrial-Congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank apparatus.
So, I think it really looks very grim. I think that the United States really needs a different policy. And since it’s not coming from any of the two established parties, I can only see that an independent candidate movement could make a difference, like Diane Sare, who is the Presidential candidate who has the clearest voice with an alternative.
SCHLANGER: You’ve been talking about the spinoff from the oil shortages, the inability to have the transportation systems moving the oil. We have a question here from John North, who says, “The fertilizer situation has been totally underreported and is catastrophic. Using damaged soil to grow crops without fertilizer is a catastrophe that will lead to dust bowl conditions. Can you comment on this?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, I think that the effect of the more than two-month war against Iran and the consequences for the world’s supply of energy, of fertilizer, of many other crucial industrial instruments, will be felt in the world economy in ways which are devastating. In many of the poor countries, the farmers simply cannot afford fertilizer at the present prices. The consequences of it will be that people will go hungry. I think if there would be any responsible world community of nations, they would immediately act and put pressure on the United States to end this war right away, and establish a crash program supplying the countries who are in need with alternatives. But I don’t see any such sign happening right now.
SCHLANGER: Here’s a question for you from an activist in Germany who writes, “President Trump reacted to comments by Germany’s Chancellor Merz. Trump was upset that Merz said Iran is humiliating the United States; and Trump is threatening to withdraw 5,000 U.S. NATO troops who are presently stationed in Germany. If he does that, how many U.S. troops will remain in Germany and what purpose are they serving by being there?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, there will still be more than 30,000 troops even if more than 5,000 will be withdrawn. I think this is a welcome step. I think these other troops should go home as well. I don’t think that they serve any purpose in the defense of Germany. I think they are there exactly as the first NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay said. The NATO troops are there to keep the Russians out, to keep the Americans in, and the Germans down. I don’t think anything has changed from that policy. And furthermore, the Warsaw Pact dissolved peacefully in 1991, and that would have been the moment for NATO to dissolve as well. It lost its raison d’être at that moment.
I think it’s a good first step but it’s not enough. Also, the fact that President Trump announced that the medium-range missiles which were supposed to be deployed this year are not going to be deployed is a very good thing, because they would have represented an absolute red line for Russia. It would have made Germany even more of a target than it is right now.
So I think what we have gained with these two measures, the non-deployment of the missiles and the reduction of some of the U.S. troops, is a little time. Unfortunately, naturally, there are some European war hawks of the Coalition of the Willing and the Rearmament crowd who are already demanding that the plans by the Europeans to build their own medium-range missiles be sped up now. But on the other side, I think we were in such an extreme showdown to a confrontation that I think it’s a welcome relief and as I said, all it does is create a little bit of time to use that time to change the paradigm.
The question everybody has to ask themselves is, are we out of our minds that we are risking the civilization of humanity by playing these geopolitical games? For what? The only people who profit from that are the speculators in the weapons industry and those people who are well-positioned in their think tanks and other government positions playing the game of who is supposed to pay. The poor people on the battlefield are dying for nothing. I think it’s high time that we really rethink the entire strategic situation and basically say that the fact is that conventional wars cannot be won anymore. If there is one proof necessary, it was just delivered by Iran successfully preventing the U.S. and Israel’s very superior military forces from winning. You cannot win such a war, not at far, distances as the present war against Iran has demonstrated.
And if you want to cross the threshold to nuclear war, you’re risking the existence of the entire human civilization. So why not draw the conclusion out of the fact that these interventionist wars cannot be won? They were not won in Vietnam, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not in Libya, not in Ukraine, and now not in Iran. So why not stop a game which cannot be won? So I think it’s an urgent need to really start seriously the discussion about the new security and development architecture, which we have been talking about since the beginning of the Ukraine war four years ago.
So it’s now the time where it’s clear the security architecture in the Middle East is gone, and I don’t think it can be reestablished, because why would the Gulf states continue with a business model which clearly did not defend themselves in the case of war? The U.S. bases were not defending the Gulf states. They were a liability causing them to be attacked, and the United States did nothing to remedy that. They only had the interests of Israel in mind, and naturally the United States, or whatever they think is the interest of the United States. So when you are pursuing a policy which clearly does not function, it’s the time to change it. I mean, Albert Einstein famously said, if you keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, you are an idiot. So we should listen to Albert Einstein.
SCHLANGER: I think he said that’s the definition of insanity, but same point. You’re listening to Helga Zepp-LaRouche from the Schiller Institute. That same person just sent in a second question. “Are there any public protests in Germany about the deployment of missiles? Why are the German people so compliant?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: That’s a very good question. I’m ripping my hair out for the same reason. It’s terrible. I know that the average person—we are doing deployments to all kinds of locations. We have information tables and so forth, and the picture you get there from talking to a lot of people in Germany is that they are desperate. Many people are aware and afraid of the war danger. Many, many people think that the whole country is going to pieces. The number of insolvencies is increasing, but people don’t think they can do anything. Unfortunately, when the majority of people think they cannot do anything, then you are not in a democracy and you are not in a republic, you are in a dictatorship. I’m afraid that while the signs of open suppression so far are limited, however, there are some serious cases of press suppression, of trying to silence just journalists who are doing their job and trying to get an objective picture. But I think the problem is that the population has been subdued by a combination of corrupt parties, mainstream media who are utterly repeating the NATO narrative, and unfortunately too few people who use their own mind and speak out.
There will be, however, in two days from now, another round of demonstrations by the pupils, who are demonstrating against the reintroduction of the draft in German politics. So it is not totally non-existent, but if you think in what mortal danger Germany still exists in, you would think that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would take to the streets, as was the case in the beginning of the 1980s, where people had a much better sense of how dangerous the situation was with the medium-range missile crisis. And today the situation is many times more dangerous than then, but people seem to be more interested in their vacation and are much less clever. I think people have been accepting to take what is being served to them in the mass media, and the number of thinking people, unfortunately, in my view, has shrunk.
SCHLANGER: I have a couple of questions on China. One person said “The Chinese seem to be playing a low-key role in trying to achieve peace in Southwest Asia. Do you know what they’re doing?”
And another person asked, “Can China play a role in taming the U.S. war drive against Iran?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I don’t think China has done little, because it was China’s diplomatic efforts backing up and behind Pakistan playing a very important role in the mediation or in the effort to mediate in the crisis. I mean, China, obviously, is very powerful and has been rising a lot, but they’re not almighty. And I think the main concern China has is how to prevent the relationship with the United States from going off track. I think China is acutely aware of the fact that the fate of mankind depends not entirely, but to a very large extent, on the relationship of the two largest economies in the world. And there is the upcoming visit of President Trump, who hopefully will go to China, I think in a little bit more than a week. And I think China is really trying very hard to make that relationship work.
That does not mean that they are not trying to encourage a ceasefire. For example, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi is right now in China meeting with Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister. And China is urgently calling for a permanent ceasefire, urgently calling for the war to stop. And I think they’re doing what they can. I cannot see what they could do otherwise, which would not… In a sense, I think the Chinese are trying to somehow influence the world situation in a harmonious way without causing any kind of sudden eruption. You may criticize that, but I think if we had more people acting like that, we would not be in a crisis at all.
SCHLANGER: Now, the other question on China is, “Trump is scheduled to go there on the 14th and 15th, so it’s the end of next week. Do you expect anything will come from that trip? Are there plans to bring the United States and China together in some major projects?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I don’t have any foreknowledge of what China is doing. All I know is that they are extremely focused on making that trip a success for the reasons I just mentioned. I could very well imagine that they will offer something to the United States which Trump would regard as a good deal. I think the Chinese would do a lot more. For example, as some of our viewers may know, we had conferences from the Schiller Institute where important spokesmen of China said that China could be instrumental in making the Extended Oasis Plan for the Middle East a reality. That is basically to develop large amounts of ocean water into fresh water through a whole sophisticated system of building canals, of using space technology to find aquifers, underground lakes, ionization of the atmosphere and things like that. They have done that successfully in Xinjiang and in the northwest of China where they turned large areas which were desert into areas of forests and farmland and so forth. If China would offer to the United States to do that together, that would be a perfect initiative.
For example, our Extended Oasis Plan is the idea to take the entire region of Southwest Asia as one economic space as it used to be in the time of the ancient Silk Road. That includes countries which are completely devastated like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon. And if one would develop certain economic corridors, which we have proposed in our World Land-Bridge Report, which we published already in 2014, and then combine that with the de-desertification program I just mentioned before, you could have a perspective for how you could in 10, 20, 30, 50 years develop Southwest Asia into a prospering hub between Asia, Africa, and Europe. And that would be a perspective for peace.
Now, these projects are so big that it would require the cooperation of many industrial powers, including cooperation between the United States and China. So if that would be discussed at this visit, it would really be a game-changer in the whole world. And I can only hope that such ideas are being put on the table. We will continue to organize for it with Zoom conferences and physical conferences in many countries because that is the reasonable way we can get out of the present geopolitical disaster.
SCHLANGER: Here’s a question from London. “As a Brit, I was shocked by the red carpet rollout for King Charles. I was pleased to see that you and your organization were protesting, but was there any response from the Americans to the idea of the absurdity of Charles coming to visit the United States and talking about the common heritage at a point of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from Britain?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, naturally, our LaRouche people were very vocal on it, Diane Sare and her Presidential campaign, Jose Vega, and our publications in general. But I must say that the public response to this atrocity was very, very disappointing. And I think the Founding Fathers, including Benjamin Franklin, probably turned in their graves if they somehow got wind of this, because this was such a blatant provocation to rewrite the history of the United States; and the lack of even acknowledging that! I mean, you had some excellent responses. Like, for example, there was a very important article by a journalist of The Hindu, I think, Mr. Mishra, which we republished. Some other articles in other countries acknowledged that.
But inside the United States, I think there was practically no fury. You would have needed an epic fury about that. But I think it’s unfortunately probably a reflection of the fact that contemporary Americans know very little, if not nothing about their history. Because if they would have focused on the fact that the American Revolution was against the British Empire, that it was a watershed in history, establishing the principles of a republic devoted to the common good, and that the war against Great Britain was the first anti-colonial war in history, which has been always referred to by people in the Global South as a model. And for Charles then to go and talk about the common values, basically swearing subtly, very skillfully, but nevertheless getting people to agree on common enemies, which can only be Russia and China at this moment. And then Trump echoing it by talking even about the Anglo-American Revolution, I mean, you really start to wonder.
I think it’s still not too late. The 250th birthday anniversary is still going on the whole year, and therefore maybe we can find some red-blooded Americans to stand up and hold up the principles of the American Revolution.
SCHLANGER: Well, maybe some of the wrestlers who Trump is going to have wrestle on July 4th, maybe some of them can bring up to him the oddity of the invitation to Charles. I have one more question for you from Barbara Barton, who’s a contact. She said she thinks more people need to know the relationship with the businesses of Jared Kushner to the plan for the port in Israel as a connection to this IMEC, the India-Middle East-European corridor. Who benefits from this, and does this have anything to do with the Abraham Accords, and is this also possibly why Modi is being turned against Iran?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I wish that in the Congress there would be some people who would seriously investigate the amazing vacillation in the oil price. Every time there was an announcement of a ceasefire or some picking up of fighting, there were some clear signs that there was insider trading by some of the people involved in the kind of circuits you are mentioning. I think this requires an investigation, and the fact that they’re not doing it just means that these Congressmen should be gotten out at the midterm election. I think if Americans want to have their country back, they better start to put in candidates and actually Senators and Congressmen who are doing that kind of work if America is to be saved. I fully agree with the question you are asking, and it does require a congressional investigation at minimum.
SCHLANGER: Helga, the last few weeks, the International Peace Coalition’s meetings on Friday, the Zoom call, have been really quite remarkable. Last week in particular, there were some presentations. Richard Falk and others were bringing up some really crucial questions, and this seems to be one of the few areas where there is an open dialogue. This is going to take place again this Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Do you have any preview for us as to who’s going to be speaking this week?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. We already have some speakers who will be talking about the impact of the $4 trillion cost of this war. But we will use this present discussion on this coming Friday as a stepping stone to build an even bigger event the following week, when we will put together the IPC with the EIR Emergency Roundtable, which we had successfully in January, March, and April; where we will really try to get experts from all over the world to discuss the impact of the war in terms of agriculture, in terms of industry, in terms of insolvencies, and destruction of physical assets. So we will try to get speakers from Africa, India, Latin America, the United States itself, the farm sector, who will portray what the effect of this war is. As I said, the monetary cost alone is already $4 trillion and growing by the day.
So you should try to come to both events, help us build from this week to the next week, because we need to have a force strong enough to really change the policy. So please become active. Bring your friends, your colleagues, family members, and get the word around. Because, as I said, world war is not yet happening, but it could happen at a moment’s notice. And the window of time to stop it is not infinite.
SCHLANGER: Well, for those of you who wrote in asking why there’s not more activity or what else could be done, this is a perfect answer. Join us Friday morning, 11 a.m., on the Zoom call. If you can’t make it at that time, it will be archived. This is really an opportunity for you to play a role in shaping the response to the injustices and the genocide and everything else.
So, Helga thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you on Friday.
