Niklas Ekdal: Is it now Iran acquires atomic bombs?

War is the continuation of politics with other means, if one is to believe Carl von Clausewitz. Unfortunately, the general talked in the night cap. War more often resembles the continuation of wishful thinking and emotional storms.

The bloody in the summer of 2025 is the distinction existential. When is the boundary between rational calculations and self -destruction in Tehran, Moscow, Jerusalem and Washington?

Let’s reverse the band for the winter of 1941. The Empire Japan – with a tenth of US industrial capacity, already in war with huge China, depending on imported food and oil – attacked the American fleet base Pearl Harbor. It could only end in one way.

Franklin D Roosevelt gave a classic speech in Congress. Now it was out of insulationism in Asia. The president was more worried about Nazi Germany.

Even that question resolved A few days later, when Adolf Hitler declared war against the United States. It was the second time within the course of a quarter of a century that Germany pulled in the field towards the rest of the world.

Before Hitler died in his bunker in 1945, he ordered that the country be destroyed. After all, the Aryan people had failed him, proved unworthy in the final fight between the races.

The slightly smoother topnazist Albert Speer never conducted the Nero order. But no one needs to doubt how Hitler had acted if German scientists exceeded American in atomic fission.

After me, Armageddon.

You know the world is crazy when China’s totalitarian communists appear as the most rational

Unlike the German in common, leading Nazis were secularized, purely atheists. Religion is not a necessary prerequisite for apocalyptic thought figures. Nationalism and narcissism go a long way.

Which brings us until 2025. World peace is now in the hands of Donald Trump. But the world’s largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is in Russia. The nuclear weapons state of Israel is bombing Iran to stop the spread of the same technology. India and Pakistan recently fingered on the trigger. China attracts the snare about Taiwan.

No world leaders take any longer US president seriously. Twice he has backed in the customs war with Xi Jinping. Instead of tougher sanctions against Putin, Trump tweeted fondly about the tsar’s birthday congratulations. Netanyahu is doing its best to withdraw the United States into the war against Iran, whose mules have received the final incentive to obtain atomic bombs as life insurance.

So far, such weapons have been warning. The efforts are too high, the warning times for short and the military benefit almost non -existent. What makes the situation terrifying now is the dissolution of international norms. Too much is in motion at the same time. Too many flirts with fantasies about the end of the time.

You know the world is crazy When China’s totalitarian communists appear to be the most rational. But even in Beijing, they can lose their heads, if the economy crises and the nation’s honor requires an end to the provocative freedom of the Taiwanese.

If the theological dimension is underestimated in Putin’s kingdom, it has always been apparent in the Middle East

Russia and Iran are all the more attached to religious passion, and the worse crowded. Although corrupt leaders usually think of their own skin in the end, apocalyptic patriotism is included in the repertoire.

Putin has mobilized the Orthodox Church for his empire project. He kisses relics on treadmills, in exchange for blessing for the Holy War in Ukraine.

Orthodox priests are integrated into Russia’s nuclear weapons forces. The atomic boats even have portable chapels. The political commissioners of the Stalin Army in the army have been replaced by soulmates who guarantee the immortality of martyrdom.

If the theological dimension It has been underestimated in Putin’s kingdom, it has always been evident in the Middle East. Parts of the Israeli government seriously believe that God promised Israel larger land areas. The Huthis in Yemen welcome martyrdom and never fold, how many bombs Saudi Arabia, USA and Israel release them.

For Gaza, Judgment Day is already a fact. To the extent that Tehran calculated with the Pogrome on October 7, 2023 as a way to break Israel’s approach to the Gulf states and bring back Palestine on the agenda, the violence has found all the way home.

What we see is what is going on, and that’s bad enough. But during the geopolitical drama, delusions about hidden relationships and fever dreams bubble about higher meaning.

A lot of revolves around the United States, and in the United States a lot revolves around Israel. The world’s oldest, most dangerous and most corked conspiracy theory is that Jews secretly control everything. A variant of the theme is the exaggerations of the power of Israello Lobby over American foreign policy.

Columnist Walter Russell Mead Fires out the concepts in the book « The Arc of a Covenant ». The American love for Israel has biblical foundations. US Evangelical Christians have been more devoted Zionists than the American Jews, as Israel’s resurrection signals the ultimate time, the Savior’s comeback.

When Ronald Reagan aired such reading of John’s revelations in the 1980s, many perceived it as obscure and old-fashioned. But on the contrary, fundamentalism is often a modern phenomenon, with the future for itself. Anyone who wants idea -historical background there can advantageously read the theology professor Bengt Kristensson Uggla’s book « The Cathedral’s Secret ».

The characteristic of apocalyptic eras that ours is that ideas about humanity’s final fate become politically relevant. The word becomes meat

When Hezbollah’s suicide bombers powdered the Navy Corps in Beirut in 1983, President Reagan is said to have whispered:

« You know, I turn to the prophets and the signs that foretell Armageddon. Wonder if we are not the generation who will see it coming. »

In Reagan’s rhetoric was The Soviet Union Evil’s empire, but the story took unexpected roads. The US’s largest trauma in his home country since Pearl Harbor became the terror on September 11, 2001. Muslim fanatics who hated Christianity, Americans, Israel – everything seemed to confirm biblical prophecies, in new context.

The characteristic of apocalyptic eras that ours is that ideas about humanity’s final fate become politically relevant. The word becomes meat. Religious archetypes receive strategic resonance.

President George W Bush was reborn Christian, albeit of the reclined kind. His choice of words in an atmosphere of panic had consequences: « this crusade, this war against terrorism », and especially the concept of « the axis of evil ».

Speechwriter David Frum took inspiration from Roosevelt’s penalty sermon in 1941. However, the network al-Qaeda had no similarities to the Second World War’s shoulder powers, let alone any links to the Iraq that the United States chose to invade. The result was disastrous – not least for Israel – when the Iranians and Jihadists moved their positions. Evil is a security policy difficult metaphor.

Between Reagan’s Cold War And Bush’s crusade against terrorism lay Clinton’s seemingly idyllic 90s. But the signs gathered in the United States heaven. For example, the romance series « Left Behind » sold by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B Jenkin’s 80 million copies, an orgy in downfall theology. In short, the action is that globalists overthrow the US government, prohibit Christianity and capitalism, and face worldwide dictatorship that degenerates in Satanism. All under the direction of Antichrist, ie UN Secretary -General.

Pretty entertaining, unless millions of voters had believed in the hallucinations and brought Donald Trump to power. The president himself has no faith, no ideology. His apocalyptic potential, like Putins, lies primarily on the psychological level. Can he imagine a world without himself at the center? How far is he prepared to go to protect the ego if the worst comes to the worst?

Trump’s loyal Defense Minister Pete Hegseth has Messianic tattoos, including the Middle Ages symbol of the Christian kingdom Jerusalem. A sad irony is, of course, that the crusades made the process short with Jews along the way. Such details do not seem to worry the Israeli government, otherwise quick to stamp the smallest critics such as anti -Semitis.

The theological paradoxes are many but geopolitics rarely lie and the story chews on. The end is with the utmost certainty not close. Mankind has always worried about Ragnarök in one form or another.

However, it would have felt better if the United States had not had an atomic submarine called « Corpus Christi », if Israel’s robots have not been called « Gabriel », if Russia’s missiles did not have the designation « Satan 2 » and Iran did not nam his after Shiamuslim martyrs.

Some do their best to at least sound like the apocalypse’s shoulder powers.

Read more Texts by Niklas Ekdal.