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Joshua Scheer
As the U.S.–Israeli assault on Iran enters its second week, economist Jeffrey Sachs is offering the kind of sober, historically literate warning that has been almost entirely erased from mainstream discourse: World War III isn’t looming — it has begun. In a wide‑ranging conversation with journalist Danny Haiphong, Sachs describes a global order unraveling in real time, driven not by strategy but by the erratic impulses of a president he bluntly calls “a madman,” and by a political class too hollowed‑out to restrain him.
The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Oil markets are convulsing. U.S. officials are leaking frantic pleas for an exit ramp even as the White House publicly denies them. And yet the bombing escalates. Sachs argues that the United States — led by a man who “knows nothing in particular” and surrounded by sycophants — has triggered a conflict it cannot control, one that threatens to collapse the global economy and pull multiple nuclear‑armed states into open confrontation.
This is the kind of analysis you will not hear on cable news, where the war is still framed as a “limited strike” or a “regional flare‑up.” Sachs is clear: this is a world‑historic rupture, and the people paying the price are not the architects of empire but the civilians caught beneath it.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs did not mince words. Speaking with journalist Danny Haiphong, Sachs delivered the kind of unvarnished assessment that has been purged from mainstream coverage of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran: the world is already in the opening phase of World War III.
The trigger, Sachs argues, was not strategy but delusion. Donald Trump launched a decapitation strike on Iran — in the middle of negotiations — on the belief that the regime would collapse in a day. “Trump’s a fool,” Sachs says. “He knows nothing in particular.” What followed was predictable to everyone except the people running the war: Iran retaliated, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and global oil markets convulsed.
Trump’s response? Announce that the war is “almost over” while simultaneously threatening to escalate it. Sachs calls this not the “madman theory” but simply a madman.
Meanwhile, the world watches in horror. Even U.S. allies privately acknowledge the catastrophe unfolding. Oil production across the Gulf is shutting down. Shipping lanes are frozen. The global economy is being dragged toward a cliff by a White House that cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.
Sachs is blunt about the stakes:
- The anti‑missile systems will fail before Iran’s missiles do.
- The global economy cannot survive a prolonged closure of Hormuz.
- The U.S. political system is too degraded to restrain its own executive.
- Russia and China view this as a direct threat to their national security.
In other words: escalation is not an accident — it is the logic of the war itself.
Sachs compares the moment to Rome under Nero or Caligula: a once‑dominant empire now in the hands of a leader who cannot be reasoned with, surrounded by courtiers, grifters, and family members posing as strategists. The constitutional system, Sachs says, has collapsed. Congress refuses to intervene. The military warns privately but obeys publicly. And the rest of the world is left to absorb the consequences.
The most chilling part of Sachs’s analysis is not the military danger — though that is immense — but the political vacuum at the center of American power. “There are no grown‑ups around,” he says. “We are out of control.”
The war, Sachs insists, is not about Iran. It is about U.S. hegemony — the belief that Washington can dictate the fate of entire regions, seize control of global energy flows, and bend the world to its will. But the world has changed. Iran is not isolated. Russia and China are not bystanders. And the United States is no longer capable of managing the chaos it unleashes.
The result is a conflict that could end quickly — or spiral into something far worse. Sachs sees only two paths: a collective global intervention to force a ceasefire, or a continued slide into a war that will reshape the century.
For now, the bombs keep falling.
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