Report on International Peace Coalition, Week 144
The 144th weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) featured leaders from the United States, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, France, and Lebanon, describing the horror of the war policy in Iran, Lebanon, and beyond, and expressing hope and support for the effort of the IPC and the Schiller Institute to create a new architecture for peace and development for all nations. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute and initiator of the IPC, opened the meeting with an overview of the seven days so far of war on Iran, and the disintegration of the Western financial system, aggravated by the cut-off of energy supplies from the Gulf region, due to the war. She identified U.S. President Donald Trump’s psychosis in saying that he doesn’t care about international law, and especially saying that he should choose the new Iranian leader. She pointed to the reports from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation that the U.S. military command is telling soldiers that God has ordained this war and has ordained Trump to lead it, and warned that this administration appears to be controlled by a type of fundamentalist lunacy. She noted that Pope Leo XIV and other Catholic clerics have spoken out against the war, and that the Global South recognizes that the war is not only against Iran, but against the Global South altogether, centered on the BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative.
Col. Richard Black, a former Marine as well as an Army JAG officer who headed the Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, pledged his support to the members of the armed forces, but added that, as a Christian, he wanted to remind those officers who believe in the “Great Awakening” that Christ said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” The war on Iran has “no justification,” he insisted, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu had fooled the Trump Administration with two lies: that Iran had nuclear weapons and that the Iranian people would rise up against the leadership within weeks. Black noted that no demonstrations in Iran of even 100 people had spoken up against the regime. “Americans are not good at looking at things from others’ eyes,” he added.
The closure of the Straits of Hormuz would deeply harm the Asian countries, noted Black, including U.S. allies such as South Korea and Japan. Iran, he added, is a highly developed nation, with a deep and rich culture. A ground invasion would be a disaster for the United States, he said, but Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender” would require ground troops. He denounced the killing of the “aging leaders” of the country, but said that this would lead to a new generation of “younger, more dynamic leaders.”
Sexual Predators and the War Machine
María de los Ángeles Huerta del Río, a former member of Congress in Mexico, who also attended EIR’s March 2 Roundtable of “World Citizens,” described the war on Iran as a “war of Israel against the opponents of the genocide in Gaza.” You can see the “devil in the eyes” of those engaged in sexual predation and the war machine. She then proposed five points of action:
- Develop a network of activists to investigate the money flow of the banks. Discover which corporations and financial havens are connected to the production of war, drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering, and the sexual predators in the Jeffrey Epstein files. The purpose is to create a public list to shame those involved.
- Investments: We must go after the investments made by those depraved institutions, banks and individuals identified.
- Global observance to denounce the elites. This can be done in three ways: 1) Investigate all the cases from the Gaza massacre to the Epstein Island. 2) Political and legal battle to move the institutions to do their job in bringing to justice those identified. 3) Generate a “Library of Infamy” that archives all findings and is public and accessible to journalists.
- Cultural performances and demonstrations to bring attention to the institutions and people involved in the depravity.
- Develop a protection network to support those who are fighting for peace.
Dr. Beatriz Bissio, an Associate Professor of Political Science in Brazil, backed the proposals of Ms. Huerta, and added her own proposals: Don’t allow the World Cup to be held in the United States this year; move the UN out of the United States; and an international meeting of sovereign states for a new security and development architecture, as called for by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, should be held, but not in the United States. Bissio added that the aggression against Iran was illegal, and that it should be seen as an Israeli war on those who opposed the genocide in Gaza. She noted a letter from Dubai-based billionaire Khalaf al-Habtoor asking U.S. President Donald Trump, “Who gave you permission and authority to turn our region into a battlefield?”
François Martin, a French intelligence strategist, said the Iran war is a “war of humanity against un-humanity.” The killing of 168 little girls was not a mistake but was prepared and organized by those who believe that Iranians “are all sinners, and should not be considered human, but like ants or rats.” The killing of women and children is thus justified. The same is true of the 87 sailors killed by the March 4 U.S. torpedoing of an unarmed Iranian ship off the coast of Sri Lanka. “We must be human,” he insisted. He believes the war will not last long, based on the fact that Netanyahu lied to the United States and President Trump that the Iranians had nuclear weapons and that the Iranian people would rise up within weeks. Trump is amazed at the Iranian response, he said, and as more Americans are killed, he will be in a very difficult position.
Bassam El-Hachem, a sociologist professor at the University of Lebanon, presented a little-reported situation in Lebanon, and focused especially on the lie that Hezbollah is a terrorist group controlled by Iran. He, himself, is a Christian, but he noted that Hezbollah came into being against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s. Iran’s assistance to Hezbollah exists for that reason. A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was strictly followed by Hezbollah, but not by Israel, he said. Lebanon, he added, is under “crushing control” from the United States, which has a large military presence in the country. El-Hachem expressed his friendship with, and support of, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the late Lyndon LaRouche, whom he had visited in prison in the 1990s.
Nuremberg Crimes Must Be Prosecuted
In the open discussion session, co-moderator Dennis Speed noted that François Martin’s point that the slaughter of girls and innocent sailors by the United States recalled a 1970s campaign by EIR and LaRouche’s organization called “Operation Nuremberg,” which addressed the “Nazi doctors” who treated patients as animals to be experimented on. Martin agreed, insisting that such crimes must be identified and prosecuted. “We must make the savages afraid,” he said. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche added that there was essentially no Western comment on these blatantly satanic slaughters, and that the United States was “losing all moral credibility in the world.”
A participant from Spain suggested that Pope Leo XIV and the Church of Rome join forces with the Russian-based Orthodox Church in organizing resistance to the war. Helga responded that the Schiller Institute had called, back in the last century, on all religious leaders—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and others—to come together against the permanent war policies and for a new architecture for peace and development for all nations, and that it is still necessary today.
Jonathan Thron of the German Schiller Institute described and showed pictures of the multiple demonstrations of students across Germany against the wars and against the campaign of the government to introduce a draft into the military. He said that there is growing support for this effort but that demonstrations were smaller this time than the first ones in December, due to extreme measures to stop them, which included school principals threatening to prevent participation in college entrance exams for those who protested; by fines imposed on those joining the demonstrations; and even by police preventing students from leaving the schools.
Dennis Speed noted Prof. El-Hachem’s cooperation with the LaRouche movement in the 1980s and ’90s, and called for him to grant interviews to EIR. El-Hachem enthusiastically agreed, and Zepp-LaRouche, EIR editor-in-chief, urged that this be done immediately.
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche closed the meeting by noting that, like Prof. El-Hachem’s point that Lebanon was an occupied country, Germany, too, is occupied, with a dozen U.S. military bases and over 40,000 soldiers stationed there, adding that the bases were being used in the war on Iran, without requesting approval from the German government. She warned that the pending financial collapse will make the already desperate situation far worse.
