HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The strategic situation is escalating in a very dangerous way, and if this course is not reversed in the short term, it does imply the danger of completely going out of control. Both the Ukraine and Mideast situations are in an escalation, but I think right now, the pivot of the escalation has shifted once again to the Mideast situation, where the United States has now, for the ninth night in a row, escalated their air attacks against Iran. Last night, they waited ridiculously until the end of the World Cup soccer final game, which Trump wanted to be part of the final honoring of the victors.
In any case, this is becoming an unbelievably brutal escalation, where CENTCOM targeted, according to them, coastal surveillance, air defense facilities, and maritime capabilities. But that should not confuse the view on the fact that many civilian installations were also destroyed, everything from bridges, even water desalination plants. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the under-construction Darkhovin nuclear power plant was attacked, the desalination plant in Jask County in Iran cutting off water to 10,000 people. Naturally, in retaliation, Iran has attacked more U.S. installations in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and other places, a desalination facility in Kuwait.
In any case, this is escalating in a very incredible way. I just got on my desk here a report, which I could not verify, but if it’s true, we should immediately, or while doing this call, try to verify it, because this report says that 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers are on their way to the Gulf. Marines, amphibious war-fighting capabilities, and their aim is Kharg Island. Now, as I said, I had no time to verify it, and as all analysts, various analysts had said before, that such a ground invasion under the present conditions, very super-hot heat, it’s July in Iran, it’s extremely hot, and the general logistical impossibility to keep the supply lines of such an invasion open would make it an operation with incredible casualties. So, we have to see.
If that happens, it is almost certain that the second front in Yemen would be opened with the aim to close the Bab el-Mandeb passage, which would cut off the road to the Red Sea, and that would then obviously further worsen the energy supply of the world.
Now, the reasoning for all of this insanity has been, supposedly, that Iran would have violated the Memorandum of Understanding, but today, the spokesman of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Baghaei, made a press conference where he rejected any suggestion that the collapsed Memorandum had failed because of ambiguities in the text. He said that “is absolutely not correct. The text of the Memorandum is a short text and has 14 clauses. Read the text, which clause of it is ambiguous.” He said that Clause 5 makes clear that the responsibility for managing the future of the Strait of Hormuz rests with Iran in consultation with Oman and through dialogue with regional states. He said, “The text is completely clear and there is no excuse for America’s treachery. Nowhere have we seen the American side announce that it resumed the attacks on Iran because of a mistake or difference in interpreting the text.” This is all hogwash, because the reality is that it is very clearly pressure coming from the Israelis, and Netanyahu in particular, which had the major cause for this.
Now, this has all kinds of reverberations. One of them is that the push to go into the direction of nuclear armament is visible in many parts of the world. One of them being Saudi Arabia, where CNN reported that the White House, according to their own sources, would have agreed to allow Saudi Arabia the enrichment of uranium. And that already last fall, between U.S. Energy Minister Chris White and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, there would have been such discussions. Also, the Japanese government is announcing that they want to, without taboos, discuss the implementation of a nuclear doctrine; without any concerns about the three non-nuclear principles of the Japanese Constitution. They want to discuss this now. And naturally, between Germany and France, there was also such a discussion to which I may come later.
Now, all of that and the whole strategic situation together, with the escalation in Ukraine, caused Harald Kujat, former General Inspector of the Bundeswehr and former head of the NATO Military Commission, and with that the highest post in NATO, he gave an interview where he is warning against the military buildup against Russia, saying, “We are dealing with a nuclear power, namely the largest nuclear power on Earth, and that through the use of nuclear weapons, we are capable of bringing about the end of the world. And if that is not an incentive to prevent an escalation into war with the largest nuclear power, then I do not know what else it would take. At the very least, it would mean that here in Europe, the use of nuclear weapons would trigger at least 50 years of nuclear winter. How is this European continent supposed to survive if there is war here? We have witnessed the destruction of the Second World War. A future war would surpass that by many times over. Where has this historical knowledge actually gone among our politicians? Where is the understanding of the dangers we are exposed to today?”
Now, I mean, I think you cannot be clearer, and it just underlines both the historical, absolute incompetence and ignorance of the present crop of European politicians, as well as their recklessness, because they put the life of the entire continent at stake.
So, in any case, before I come to Ukraine, let me just mention that Marwan Barghouti, who is still sitting in Israeli jail, declared that he wants to participate in the upcoming presidential election early 2027. But there are also reports that his life is increasingly in danger because of the conditions of his jailing by the Israelis. Also, just to give you a glimpse of why I said that the Israeli influence was what tilted the Trump decision against the Memorandum of Understanding, it’s now reported that the AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, alone in Michigan, in the Senate primary, spent $30 million. Now, that gives you a sense of the kind of money which is being spread around, and why the U.S. has stopped to be a republic and has turned into a plutocracy.
Then, the second crisis scenario in Ukraine, there we urgently need to look into it more closely, because the whole country is in turmoil. Zelenskyy laid off Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and the entire cabinet, and that has been combined with the ouster of Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, where basically big tensions between Zelenskyy and Fyodorov have been reported. It is a little bit murky, because on the one side, the demonstrations, which are big in many cities, Lviv and other places, were supposedly in support of Fedorov, and against the very brutal recruitment methods into the army. So, I’m not entirely clear if Fedorov was against that, or whatever. In any case, what is also at stake is that this Fedorov was a darling of the globalists, of Ursula von der Leyen. Von der Leyen was just in Kyiv. They supposedly agreed on a new major drone production deal, which is now in jeopardy. Then also, supposedly this is all going against corruption, but it’s murky, to say the least.
In any case, it seems that there is significant unrest in the population, especially against the methods of recruitment into the army, which everybody knows is a death sentence. It is also reported that apparently this Fedorov was linked to Soros circles, and that would make it a common denominator with the situation in Albania, where also you have very huge demonstrations going on now for more than three weeks. It started off with protests against Kushner taking over a resort at the coast of Albania, but in the meantime, it has spread to be a very large protest against the government in general. There is a clear pattern of massive buy-up of land by mainly very rich people, to say the least. I think we need to look at, since it was reported that 12 top multi-billionaires own as much as half of the world population, one has to look at where they invest their money. It’s not just AI and such things, but they’re also massively buying up real estate everywhere, but certain areas in particular, like Albania, have been targeted very massively. So, it could be a re-feudalization of much of the land through private means, but what’s the difference if these properties are then sealed off and occupied by multi-billionaires? What is the difference to the feudal system in the 18th century? So, this is definitely worth some more investigation.
In any case, this situation in Ukraine is definitely extremely hot, because at the same time, the military attacks both from Russia into Kyiv, into many crucial military installations, and also vice versa, Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities are escalating massively. So, Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, a certain competitor of Zelenskyy, also attacked the layoff of Fedorov, saying this was a massive mistake. In any case, we have to look at this, because it could be either turning into a Maidan against Zelenskyy, but it could also be, if you look at when people start to protest because of some reason, it can turn into an overall protest against the government.
That was the case in 1989, where the demonstrations had started with a relatively minor issue, namely the right to travel abroad. First, people by the thousands occupied embassies, but then it spilled over, and in a few weeks, the whole GDR regime, and with that, soon, the Soviet Union was ousted. So, even the fact that so much more is at stake now, and so many more people are disenfranchised of anything, I think we are looking at a potential explosion. Though that has not prevented the German foreign ministry from having given the order to rent poster walls all over Kyiv, basically saying that Kyiv is the number one partner for Germany. This is totally crazy.
Then Maria Zakharova, who had warned that the West is completely in conformity with the new fascism, as it is expressed by the manifesto of Palantir, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, and that they have no objection to a fascist total takeover of information, and so forth. Now, one element of that was that Zakharova refused to give the hand to the German Ambassador Lambsdorff, and she said this was her answer to the open Russophobia of the German Ambassador. Now, the protest of Zakharova against Palantir is more than urgent and legitimate, because there are several legislative projects underway in Germany, which basically are consolidating a Palantir surveillance system, which allows “independent” monitoring of the finances of exposed public persons, governments, parliaments, parties, a surge of computers, espionage, in a preemptive way of private communications, modifying the so-called Freedom of Information Act, which makes it practically impossible to query, to pose a query to institutions. Palantir has already made agreements with the police in Hessen, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Rhineland Palatinate, and North Rhine-Westphalia.
So this is already going on massively, so that basically means the police have given access of all this data to this apparatus. Now, Peter Thiel received the Axel Springer Award 2026, according to Springer chief Matthias Döpfner, because Thiel would have proven courage and non-conformism. That’s a new word for question you can say.
Now, this is all very, very serious, and therefore one cannot disagree with Jeffrey Sachs, who basically says that people should really rise up against this war danger. Now, France and Germany, as I mentioned, have started the first concrete military exercises for future cooperation with French nuclear weapons. Also, there is more discussion about a German bomb. So there was a German-French Defense and Security Council meeting, which met in the context of Macron’s visit there at the Nörvenich Air Base, southwest of Cologne. They had two Rafale planes and two German Eurofighters, and they were exercising, among other things, refueling in the air. And this fall, German military will go as observers on a French nuclear maneuver. Germany, however, will have no decision power. Paris will keep the leadership in its own hands.
So then, naturally, Germany right now is undergoing a, or it has erupted in a major storm last week. Sometime in the middle of last week, Bild-Zeitung had a picture on the front page congratulating the two papas for their surrogate mother-born child. Then by Thursday, Friday, this built up to an unprecedented storm, where everybody in the CDU, the women’s organizations, and so forth, started to chime in. And what has happened is that Jens Spahn, who was the head of the CDU-CSU group in the parliament, and thus a possible competitor to Merz, who is married with a man; and they had apparently hired a woman in the United States to carry a baby for them. And that alone is not illegal in Germany, even though surrogate motherhood is illegal. But it’s not illegal if you get such a baby in a country where it is allowed, like the United States. But then, Spahn, in February of this year, had presided with others of the government in legislation prohibiting surrogate motherhood in Germany as being an exploitation of women, bordering on slavery and totally morally unacceptable. And he had voted against this, while it’s clear that now that we are in June, July, obviously the surrogate mother had been pregnant already at the same time. And this always takes a certain amount of time in preparation. So the double standard was what blew off the top. So the pressure was building up, and over the weekend, Merz told him to resign. Now, on this story, there is much more behind, not only is the Epstein class cloud hanging over the whole thing. Also, Jens Spahn had participated in the Peter Thiel Dialogue meetings for several years since 2015. He had many other scandals behind him, including in context with masks during the Corona crisis, big real estate buying, and so forth. In any case, it could be that either the population liked to have an outlet for a long amassed anger over this whole moral decay, as it was expressed in this case; or it could be that Merz may have played this picture to the media, we don’t know yet. In any case, Jens Spahn is out, and Merz said he would rebuild the cabinet, because he’s also down in the polls. So we could have a government change more quickly than people think.
So looking at all of this, if this war in the Middle East continues to escalate like that, the energy reserves will be out for sure, latest if not August, in September, very latest October, more likely before. Which also means that once the reserves are out as a buffer, as a cushion, because the release of some of these strategic reserves had happened in the recent period to keep the oil price down, so it never really went much beyond 86, a little bit more. But it could easily go up to $100, $150 per barrel, leading to a very short-term recession and even depression. And who knows where it would go from there, in terms of the financial system blowing out, and a hot autumn being a mild word for what is in store.
But it could all become much more quickly a real strategic crisis, because depending how this goes, one of the Iranian deputies from the parliament had already said at the beginning of July, that if there is a renewed attack—this was before the Memorandum of Understanding was broken—then Iran would review its nuclear doctrine. And given the fact that the nuclear doctrine before was no nuclear weapons because of the Fatwa, which still was in effect, that nuclear weapons are in contradiction to Islam; a change in the nuclear doctrine can only mean to go in the direction of allowing nuclear weapons. And as Ted Postol had argued already a long time ago, it would take Iran maybe one week or two weeks to have nuclear weapons; and that is what we are obviously on the road to have very soon. And then with the option of what will Israel do, what will Trump do, because he makes these absolutely barbarian threats to wipe everything in Iran at any moment. And naturally, with what I said about the possibility of ground troops, we are in an absolute escalation, and therefore we should also really do the maximum internationally to tell people to change course, to go in the direction of a new security and development architecture instead; not waiting until the UN General Assembly, but really saying this has to change.
And given the fact that a depression will affect the whole world, this conflict is a legitimate reason for every government and everybody to raise their voice as being an affected party. So, that is why we have to escalate our youth organizing, which was very effective. We had this conference on Saturday, which I think was really showing an incredible potential for that kind of organizing. And naturally, we should really make a super effort to make our event on the 31st of July on the migrant issue, a point where people can say that there is another way how to deal with all of these crises, and that is peaceful development. So, that’s really what I wanted to say.
Closing Remarks:
Well, I think if you observe the discussion after my briefing, understandably it focused on the youth organizing, the NDAA organizing, and why these two things are obviously of vital strategic importance. There was, except what Dennis Speed just said, almost no discussion about the central thesis of my briefing, which is that we are very rapidly catapulting into a situation of no return. I think that especially right now, it’s very difficult to say which crisis is more dangerous, because last week we had agreed that it was Ukraine, this week it’s Iran, and both are true and more true by the day. This thing is running towards a point of no return, and I really would urge everybody that whatever organizing you are doing, be it youth organizing, be it NDAA, podcasters, whatnot, you have to put the danger of World War III up front, because it is real, it is immediate, and in my view, that was one of the reasons, if not the essential reason, why the IPC was founded in the first place, with an understanding that people can disagree on all kinds of points, but if they don’t agree on stopping nuclear war, then everything else is in vain.
We are emphatically closer to that than at any moment in history before, and that includes the high point of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it includes last week or yesterday. I think it’s really important, because I know people have an organic, understandable human desire not to look at the abyss without interruption, because it’s incredibly strenuous, and it puts you into sleepless nights, and it’s an unbelievable challenge. But if we do not get across that tension, then we’re not doing the right job.
Obviously, the issue of LaRouche is immediately associated with it, because if we ask people to act on our warnings, they have to admit that that is the analysis, and also, obviously, the solution. So, I would really urge people to incorporate what I said about what Kujat said, what our assessment is up front in the mobilization, because the NDAA fight, as important as it is, does not capture the full dimension of where we are at. And I would really urge people to really think about that, because I know that there is a tendency to not use that, because it tends to freak people out. And I know it’s much easier to organize on a lesser issue. But at this point, I can only say in the starkest possible terms, we are at that point. So, we will have an NEC meeting later on, and discuss this further in terms of practical initiatives, which should be put up front, but I would really urge you to consider this.
