The following is an edited transcript of the opening speech by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to Panel One of the April 6, 2026 EIR Emergency Roundtable event, “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Is There Still Time To Prevent the War Against Iran from Escalating into a Global Nuclear Conflict?” Mrs. Zepp-laRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute and editor-in-chief of Executive Intelligence Review. Subheads have been added. The video is available here.

Dear honorable participants, ladies and gentlemen, friends of the Schiller Institute from around the world, the title of my speech is “Short Road to Hell, or Daring To Have a Sublime View of Mankind: The Need To Have an Extended Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia.” It could very well be that the present generations of the human species lack the moral fiber to avoid our self-annihilation in a global thermonuclear war, because that danger does exist in the short term if you don’t find a solution to the war started by the United States and Israel as an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran.

Five weeks into the war, it is clear that none of the goals defined by the United States side have been accomplished. Despite repeated assassinations of leading Iranian officials and negotiators, there has been no regime change. The population of Iran, on the contrary, is rallying behind the government more than ever. Neither the nuclear research facilities nor the ballistic missile systems have been dismantled. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before, is now closed to all hostile parties. The consequences for the world economy are already traumatic, and could become catastrophic if the war should extend for more weeks. Already now, millions of poor people and many businesses suffer from increased energy prices. The interruption in fertilizer supplies could turn into mass starvation. The plunge into a global depression almost certainly will trigger a blowout of the totally over-indebted global financial system [debt] of $2.4 quadrillion. But also many features of the international system are in disarray.

The business model of the Gulf States’ ambitious roles in international trade and finance, luxurious lifestyles for the elites protected by American military bases, is in shambles. The collective West is not so collective anymore; NATO fizzles. The entire post–Cold War architecture is crumbling, with the Global South determined to end 500 years of colonialism for good. The old order is disintegrating, the shape of the new one still in question.

The biggest casualty, however, threatens to be our humanity. A martial language, “Bombing Iran back into the Stone Age, where they belong”; “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies”—these are some of the many comments which have been called forth, from American as well as international legal experts, questioning the violation of international law and the code of war.

Cardinal [Blase] Cupich [Catholic Archbishop] of Chicago appeals to the conscience, protesting a video on the official X account of the White House, which combines scenes of action movies with the actual material from the war against Iran. The words of Pope Leo XIV on this Easter during his Urbi et Orbi have been a clear message, unmistakably against the perpetrators of today’s dangerous war in Southwest Asia: “Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash war choose peace. Not peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”

Where is this supposed to end? As we will hear in the course of this meeting, the non-proliferation system may be almost irreversibly destroyed. Many nations are concluding that the only way to avert an attack is the possession of nuclear weapons. The disappearance of international law and its replacement by a “might makes right” approach raises concerns about humanity’s very survival, especially given the growing delusion that some chosen people can outlive a thermonuclear Armageddon.

The countries of the world can either adopt what we are proposing now, or go all the way and let the war play out with the option of the use of nuclear weapons. There is still a chance to make a decision for the first option. So, what we wish to propose is a radically different approach, one which does not extend the present political trajectories of the different political forces in a linear way into the near future, but looks at Southwest Asia from the standpoint of how it could look in 20, 50, or 100 years from now.

How Earth Is Viewed from Beyond the Moon

Today, while the Artemis II astronauts are flying for the first time 4,000 miles beyond the Moon—which will take human beings to the farthest distance in space ever—is a wonderful moment to reflect that soon we will combine the different Artemis [United States], Roscosmos [Russia], Chang’e and Tianwen [China], and other nations’ space missions, into one of the international community, because it will have dawned on us that the challenges of interstellar space travel in a universe of more than two trillion galaxies are far too big for just one nation. Looking at our planet from the standpoint of the universe at large, we see not geopolitical conflict; we see only the common interest of the One Humanity to progress.

By that time, it will be regarded as self-evident that we will have applied to that region of Southwest Asia all available technologies to transform the desert into green landscapes with canals and artificial lakes, large-scale forests, farms, and markets. By that time, the present level of AI [artificial intelligence], quantum computing, and ocean farming will look like technology fossils from an early age. The developed fusion economy will have eliminated the fight for the control of oil and gas, as well as of the basic needs of the world population for a long time.

So, taking the view of our descendants as our own perspective, the intellectuals, scientists, and engineers from the different countries of Southwest Asia, from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Gulf States, should take that region as a whole and determine which development corridors are the most suitable, given the geographic realities, to transform it into a fully developed land.

Given that almost all of the region is an expanding desert, the creation of new water sources is a priority, based on different components ranging from a canal system from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, desalination of large amounts of ocean water with the aid of peaceful nuclear energy, accessing aquifers, using space technology to locate underground lakes, ionization of the atmosphere [to induce cloud formation and rainfall], etc.

China has already transformed large territories like Xinjiang and the Northeast from deserts into well-to-do economic territories and has offered its assistance. The Five-Sea Strategy of Syrian President [Bashar al-]Assad of 2004 [Figure 1], connecting the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea, is still a valid conception for an infrastructure network integrating waterways, fast train systems, and highways as main transport arteries within development corridors around which energy distribution and communication systems can be installed, to create site conditions for investment in new cities, industrial parks, and development zones. Many of the lines are obvious since the time of the ancient Silk Road. Others will be developed due to breakthroughs in technology.

Here are some of the many more possible examples [Figure 2]. One such corridor can connect Tehran [Iran] via Baghdad [Iraq], Amman [Jordan] to Aqaba [Jordanian port on the Red Seaʼs Gulf of Aqaba], then to Sharm El-Sheikh [southern tip of Egyptʼs Sinai peninsula], to Cairo, which is partially underway. The Iran-Iraq-Syria railway link is in its early planning stages, and the full Baghdad-Amman-Cairo corridor is not yet operational. This route crosses the Euphrates River, where ancient trade routes can be transformed into modern corridors from the port of Basrah in Iraq, at the Persian Gulf, onward further northwest to Aleppo [Syria]. Of this, 51 kilometers are built. This is now the Iraq Development Road, a $17 billion high-speed rail and highway project from Basra to the Turkish border near Aleppo. The first phase is supposed to be operational by 2031. Existing rail lines should be modernized into fast-train systems and integrated with highways and energy distribution, communication systems. This is in process.

Syria and Iraq are actively rehabilitating and modernizing existing lines through full integration. This could be sped up if prioritized. The land route to India connecting the Iranian rail network to Zahedan on the Iran-Pakistan border is online. The freight service between Zahedan in Iran and Quetta in Pakistan has restarted. The Chabahar-Zahedan railway is near completion as of 2026. Other lines go from Deir ez-Zor [Syria] to Tadmor [Palmyra] to Damascus and Beirut [Lebanon]. This is in process.

Post–civil war rehabilitation of the Syrian railway is underway, including the Damascus to Deir ez-Zor line. The Beirut connection remains politically challenging, but is under discussion. Another north-south link is from Syria to the industrial zones of the Suez Canal; this is in planning. Syria and Egypt have had preliminary talks, but no active construction yet. Another north-south railway goes from Damascus to Mecca and Medina [Saudi Arabia]. A revival of the historic Hejaz railway was agreed upon by Türkiye, Syria, and Jordan in September 2025. Reconstruction is planned, but not yet begun. A tunnel under the Bab el-Mandeb Strait from Djibouti to the Arab Peninsula is not yet under construction, funding not yet planned, but it could be decided. Links to Europe, the Black Sea, and Russia are partially in place. Existing rail and ferry links via Türkiye to Europe are operational; however, sanctions have impacted the Russian connection.

Prosperity for Southwest Asia Would Benefit the World

In 20, 30, 50 years from now, the integrated infrastructure of all of Southwest Asia could look as dense as the greater Bay Area of China around Shenzhen, Guangdong, and Zhuhai. If all the nations of Southwest Asia would agree on such a development perspective, it would also be in the real interest of the United States and European nations, since it would define a perspective of joint prosperity rather than the perils of a looming world war. It would guarantee the existence of Israel as well, which cannot possibly count on its own security if it is surrounded by neighbors who have been, generation after generation, governed by hate.

It is also clear that the countries of the Global Majority must have the strongest voice in determining the future of the world order, since the use of nuclear weapons would destroy them as well, albeit maybe a few weeks later, as Indonesian President Sukarno warned already, at the Asia-African Conference in Bandung [Indonesia], in 1955. As he emphasized then, the countries of the Global South may be politically and economically relatively still weaker, but together they represent a moral authority to raise their voice for peace in the world.

As the destiny of the entire human species is at stake in this present conflict, the countries of the Global South—and they have become much stronger since—must take an active role in the determination of its outcome. The international community must combine a common development perspective, which must include the Extended Oasis Plan, as well as the Africa Plan for 2063 [Agenda 2063], as well as other components of the World Land-Bridge perspective presented by the Schiller Institute in 2014. It must be combined with a dialogue of civilizations, which must bring forward the best tradition of all cultures and civilizations, because such an approach will demonstrate that the torch of progress of all of mankind was passed over the millennia from one civilization to the other; from Ethiopia to China to Persia to India and Mesopotamia, from the land of the thousand cities, to Egypt, and finally Greece, and eventually the Americas. A dialogue of all these cultural contributions will make clear to all people living on Earth the tremendous richness which lies in the unity in diversity, that while we all share the ability to discover universal principles in science and art which are valid for all of humanity, that the diversity is actually an enrichment which makes all more culturally prosperous and clearly is the intention of the Creator.

The Power of the Noösphere

If one looks at the longer arc of human development, which is actually only a shorter span in the development of our universe, it is clear that the theory of the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky is proven correct. Namely, that the power of the noösphere is continuously increasing relative to the power of the inorganic and the biosphere; meaning that the role of creative reason as a geological force is expanding in evolution. From that perspective, we as the human species are now challenged to apply the new paradigm emerging out of the increased significance of the noösphere, to the way we organize our affairs politically and economically among ourselves. This requires that we change the axioms of our thinking about the image of man and the role of man in the universe accordingly, which means that we have to put the interest of the One Humanity first before we define all other national and cultural interests, in affinity with the interest of mankind as a whole.

In all of Classical literature, what separates the tragic outcome of drama from the ability to determine a solution on a higher level than the one on which the conflict arose, is the ability of the main actors to elevate their thinking to the level of the sublime, that quality of mind which is associated with creative mentation, with agape, with love for mankind. The sublime mind does not seek personal advantage or pleasure, but connects his identity with the fate of all of humanity, not only in the present, but for all future generations to come. Nobody can deny that it is the takeover of the liberal paradigm in Western civilization—that notion that everything is allowed, everything goes, which went along with the cancellation of our Classical heritage—which led to the disappearance of the sublime in our thinking. It can be revived, but only if we do so as a willful act. This is the test I spoke of—if we have the moral fiber as a species to survive.

Therefore, what we are proposing here is not some arbitrary utopian proposal, but a very concrete, albeit not pragmatic, way to create a future for humanity. Thank you.