The U.S. midterm elections delivered a resounding defeat to the Trump administration, along with a clear message: We are fed up with the Iran war and want it over; we are drowning under debt and high prices; and we think the aggressively anti-immigrant policy and ICE brutality has gone way too far.
If these were normal times, your standard pragmatic politician would get the message and respond by firing some leading people and reversing course—at least partially.
But these are not normal times. We are in the systemic breakdown phase of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system, where wars of aggression, Schachtian economics, and hyperinflationary speculation are the order of the day.
And so, three days after the election, Trump named his long-time political pit bull, Stephen Miller, as the new White House Chief of Staff, sending a clear message that, in his remaining two years in office, Trump intends to go to total war not only against the Democratic Congress, but against the population that voted against Trump’s policies. Miller has been variously described in the media today as a “combative bulldog,” “Trump’s MAGA’s brain for a decade,” an “immigration hardliner,” and “impervious to criticism or traditional constraints”—such as the U.S. Constitution. And it was for those “qualities” that Trump chose him.
As for foreign policy coming off the midterms, CENTCOM announced yesterday that it was forming “Task Force Iron Gate,” whose mission is to stop all land-crossings into Iran, in addition to the maritime blockade already in effect, to try to strangle the country of 90 million entirely. Iran has extensive land trade with China; growing deals with Russia for the importation of natural gas; and, perhaps most significantly, it is at the center of the International North-South Transport Corridor, which connects the ports of Mumbai in India and Chabahar in Iran, and then proceeds by rail through Iran and West Asia all the way to Russia. It is a major, new corridor of development that the nations of the Eurasian continent are investing in, just as they are doing in the rapidly expanding Belt and Road Initiative of China.
Along with this all-out economic warfare, there is continuing discussion in Washington, London, and Netanyahu’s Tel Aviv, that Trump should just go ahead and drop a nuclear weapon on Iran to get the war over—and this remains a very real danger, even while talks between the U.S. and Iran seem to be continuing behind the scenes.
As Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche told the weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition on Nov. 6, “for more than three years now, we have warned every week about the danger of a nuclear war, but never has the situation been so close as right now.”
“This war against Iran has cost Trump the midterm election,” Zepp-LaRouche continued, “leading to the biggest defeat of the President and the Republicans for a very, very long time. If they continue this war, the likelihood that they will lose all chances for the 2028 presidency is gigantic. Nevertheless, the danger is that this strike could occur today, tomorrow, over the weekend. So immediate action is absolutely necessary.”
The upcoming Nov. 18-19 tripartite meeting of presidents Trump, and Putin on the sidelines of the APEC meeting, is coming into focus as a possible point of inflection away from the danger of nuclear war. Dimitriy Trenin, veteran Russian strategic analyst and president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), weighed in with Moscow’s thinking about the historic summit:
“The fact that for the first time ever the leaders of these three countries are discussing the possibility of a trilateral meeting is more than just a topic for pundits to mull on air. This may not be the dawn of a new world order, but it could be a small step to balance wars with diplomacy.”
