Tucker Carlson’s warning, issued on Sunday, that Donald Trump is contemplating bombing Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain with a nuclear weapon, has generated the full range of responses, from the National Iranian American Council calling for a full mobilization to prevent that scenario from ever happening, to The War Zone dismissing the warning as “absurd.” While there are real physical constraints on actually deploying a nuclear weapon against a target such as Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility, and the consequences would be disastrous, missing from the commentary is the real context in which a decision to use or not to use a nuclear weapon is occurring. The old order of colonial looting and unbridled financial speculation centered on The City of London and Wall Street is coming down, to be replaced by a new order of economic development demanded by the Global South.

As Russian economist Sergei Glazyev has written, “The old international institutions are no longer capable of providing stability, while new ones are taking shape amidst a struggle between the old and the new centers of power.” Those who cling to the old system, which includes the financial interests behind Trump, are becoming increasingly desperate as the giant mountain of unpayable debt they have built comes closer to collapse. Carlson’s critics contend that reason will prevail and nuclear war will be prevented, because the aftermath of a nuclear detonation is too horrible to contemplate. Reason is essential, but it won’t come from the elites behind Trump and Bibi Netanyahu.