Dialogues: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Niklas Ekdal: Now the Iranian mullahs have obvious reasons to acquire nuclear bombs

https://www.dn.se/kultur/niklas-ekdal-nu-har-de-iranska-mullorna-uppenbara-skal-att-skaffa-atombomber/

Niklas Ekdal: Now the Iranian mullahs have obvious reasons to acquire nuclear bombs

Published 2025-06-17

Although corrupt leaders tend to think of their own skin in the end, apocalyptic patriotism is part of their repertoire, writes Niklas Ekdal. In the photo from June this year, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gives a speech on the 36th anniversary of the death of Imam Khomeini

Too many are flirting with fantasies of the apocalypse. Geopolitics is bubbling with religious fundamentalism and delusions of hidden connections. World peace is now in the hands of Donald Trump, writes Niklas Ekdal about the bloody summer of 2025.

This is a commentary text. The writer is responsible for the analysis and positions in the text.

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Niklas Ekdal

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War is the continuation of politics by other means, if you are to believe Carl von Clausewitz. Unfortunately, the general spoke in his nightcap. War more often resembles the continuation of wishful thinking and emotional storms.

In the bloody summer of 2025, the distinction is existential. When will the line between rational calculations and self-destruction be crossed in Tehran, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Washington?

Let's rewind to the winter of 1941. The Japanese Empire—with a tenth of the industrial capacity of the United States, already at war with the mighty China, dependent on imported food and oil—attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. It could only end one way.

Franklin D Roosevelt gave a classic speech to Congress. Now isolationism in Asia was over. The president was more worried about Nazi Germany.

That issue was also resolved a few days later, when Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. It was the second time in a quarter of a century that Germany had taken to the field against the rest of the world.

Before Hitler died in his bunker in 1945, he ordered the country to be destroyed. The Aryan people had betrayed him, having proven themselves unworthy in the final battle between the races.

The somewhat more flexible top Nazi, Albert Speer, never carried out Nero's order. But no one needs to doubt how Hitler would have acted if German scientists had surpassed American scientists in nuclear fission.

After me, Armageddon.

You know the world is crazy when China's totalitarian communists appear to be the most rational

Unlike the German people in general, leading Nazis were secular, even atheists. Religion is not a necessary prerequisite for apocalyptic thinkers. Nationalism and narcissism go a long way.

Which brings us to 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. Nuclear-armed Israel is bombing Iran to stop the spread of the same technology. India and Pakistan recently pulled the trigger. China is tightening the noose on Taiwan.

Although corrupt leaders usually think of their own skin in the end, apocalyptic patriotism is part of their repertoire, writes Niklas Ekdal.

Although corrupt leaders tend to think of their own skin in the end, apocalyptic patriotism is part of their repertoire, writes Niklas Ekdal. Photo: Iranian Presidency/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

No world leaders take the US president seriously anymore. He has twice backed down in the tariff war with Xi Jinping. Instead of tougher sanctions against Putin, Trump enthusiastically tweets about the Tsar's birthday greetings. Netanyahu is doing his best to drag the US into the war against Iran, whose mullahs have been given the final incentive to acquire nuclear bombs as life insurance.

So far, such weapons have seemed to deter war. The stakes are too high, the warning periods too short, and the military benefit almost nonexistent. What makes the situation terrifying now is the dissolution of international norms. Too much is in motion at once. Too many are flirting with fantasies of the end of 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 minds if the economy collapses and the nation's honor demands an end to the provocative freedom of the Taiwanese.

If the theological dimension has been underestimated in Putin's kingdom, it has always been evident in the Middle East.

Russia and Iran are all the more attacked by religious passion, and all the more in dire straits. Although corrupt leaders tend to think of their own skin in the end, apocalyptic patriotism is part of the repertoire.

Putin has mobilized the Orthodox Church for his imperial project. He kisses relics on a conveyor belt, in exchange for blessings for the holy war in Ukraine.

Orthodox priests are integrated into Russia's nuclear forces. The nuclear submarines even have portable chapels. The Stalinist-era political commissars in the army have been replaced by chaplains who guarantee the immortality of martyrdom.

If the theological dimension 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 has promised Israel greater territory. The Houthis in Yemen welcome martyrdom and will never back down, no matter how many bombs Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel drop on them.

The Radio and Television House in Tehran was hit by an Israeli attack on Monday, resulting in one death and several injuries.

The radio and television house in Tehran was hit on Monday by an Israeli attack that led to one death and several injuries. Photo: TT

For Gaza, doomsday is already a fact. To the extent that Tehran calculated the pogrom of October 7, 2023, as a way to break Israel's rapprochement with the Gulf states and bring Palestine back on the agenda, violence has found its way all the way home.

What we see is what is happening, and that is bad enough. But beneath the geopolitical drama, delusions of hidden connections and fever dreams of higher meaning bubble up.

Much revolves around the United States, and in the United States much revolves around Israel. The world's oldest, most dangerous and most stupid conspiracy theory is that Jews secretly control everything. A variation on this theme is the exaggeration of the Israel lobby's power over American foreign policy.

Columnist Walter Russell Mead unpacks the concepts in the book "The Arc of a Covenant." The American love for Israel has biblical undertones. American evangelical Christians have been more devoted Zionists than American Jews, because Israel's resurrection signals the end times, the savior's comeback.

When Ronald Reagan aired such a reading of the Book of Revelation in the 1980s, many perceived it as obscure and archaic. But fundamentalism is often a modern phenomenon, with a future ahead of it. Anyone who wants a background in the history of ideas can benefit from reading theology professor Bengt Kristensson Uggla's book "The Secret of the Cathedral".

The hallmark of apocalyptic eras like ours is that ideas about the ultimate fate of humanity become politically relevant. The Word Becomes Flesh

When Hezbollah suicide bombers pulverized the Marine 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. I wonder if we are the generation that will see it coming."

In Reagan's rhetoric, the Soviet Union was the evil empire, but history took unexpected paths. The United States' greatest domestic trauma since Pearl Harbor was the terror of September 11, 2001. Muslim fanatics who hated Christianity, Americans, Israel – all seemed to confirm biblical prophecy, in a new context.

The hallmark of apocalyptic eras like ours is that ideas about the ultimate fate of humanity become politically relevant. The word becomes flesh. Religious archetypes gain strategic resonance.

President George W Bush was a born-again Christian, albeit a back-handed one. His choice of words in an atmosphere of panic had consequences: "This crusade, this war on terror," and especially the concept of the "axis of evil."

Speechwriter David Frum drew inspiration from Roosevelt's 1941 sermon. However, the al-Qaeda network bore no resemblance to the Axis powers of World War II, let alone any connections to the Iraq that the United States chose to invade. The result was disastrous – not least for Israel – as the Iranians and jihadists advanced their positions. Evil is a difficult metaphor for security policy.

Between Reagan's Cold War and Bush's crusade against terrorism lay the seemingly idyllic 1990s of Clinton. But the signs were piling up in the sky of America. For example, the novel series "Left Behind" by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins sold 80 million copies, an orgy of doomsday theology. The plot, in short, is that globalists overthrow the American government, ban Christianity and capitalism, and introduce a worldwide dictatorship that degenerates into Satanism. All under the leadership of the Antichrist, that is, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Quite entertaining, if millions of voters hadn't believed the hallucinations and brought Donald Trump to power. The president himself has no faith, no ideology. His apocalyptic potential, like Putin's, lies primarily on the psychological plane. Can he imagine a world without himself at the center? How far is he prepared to go to protect his ego if the worst comes to the worst?

Trump's loyal Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has messianic tattoos, including the medieval symbol of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. A sad irony, of course, is that the Crusades cut short the process with Jews along the way. Such details do not seem to concern the Israeli government, otherwise quick to label the slightest criticism as anti-Semitic.

The theological paradoxes are many, but geopolitics rarely lies and history moves on. The end is most certainly not near. Humanity has always worried about ragnarok in one form or another.

However, it would have felt better if the US didn't have a nuclear submarine named "Corpus Christi", if Israel's missiles weren't called "Gabriel", if Russia's missiles weren't called "Satan 2" and Iran didn't name its missiles after Shiite Muslim martyrs.

Some people do their best to at least sound like the Axis powers of the apocalypse.