There be Monsters Out There
There be monsters out there…
Watching the unfolding Iran War, I’m struck by the sheer sociopathy gripping many of the principal actors. Not mere incompetence. Not simple strategic miscalculation. Something darker: leaders so consumed by ego, vengeance, ideological obsession, and political survival that they appear almost indifferent to the consequences their actions will unleash upon the rest of humanity.
The Trump administration, obsessed with ballrooms, golden statues, triumphal arches, and the theatrics of imperial grandeur, has helped drag the world into an extraordinary geopolitical disaster.
The Gulf is effectively closed to meaningful traffic. Affordable energy supplies have been shattered. And modern civilisation does not merely run on oil for cars. Energy underpins fertiliser production, food packaging, refrigeration, shipping, transport, and industrial agriculture itself. A recent UN assessment warned that some 45 million people are now at risk of severe food insecurity as a consequence of the Iran War and its economic aftershocks. That number will almost certainly rise as negotiations stall and escalation continues.
And this is where the true madness begins.
The remnant IRGC leadership, driven by vengeance and survival, has arguably shattered the Gulf’s long-term strategic model: transforming the region into a stable global hub for tourism, finance, logistics, and aviation. That model depended on predictability and confidence. Both are now evaporating.
The Gulf states relied heavily on expatriate expertise to build their economies. Many of those people may never return. Others will return only with exit strategies already prepared. Once skilled human capital loses confidence in regional stability, capital flight becomes human flight.
Then there is Israel — never an easy subject in polite conversation — led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who has transformed ruthless political survival into a form of high art. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has existed on an almost permanent war footing. Netanyahu, backed by powerful pro-Israel influence networks in Washington and reinforced by Trump-era political and family alliances through Jared Kushner, appears to have succeeded where previous Israeli leaders failed: convincing an American president to directly join a war against Iran.
Republican and Democrat presidents alike resisted crossing that threshold for decades.
Trump crossed it.
Did the tail wag the dog? People will have their own conclusions. But let’s do the arithmetic:
A narcissistic American president + a vengeful Iranian revolutionary elite
+ an Israeli prime minister consumed by political survival and maximalist strategic ambitions = international chaos.
Trump does not appear particularly concerned with the global ramifications of this war. His priorities seem narrower: legacy, image, dominance, headlines, polls, personal mythology. The international system is merely background scenery to the drama of Donald Trump.
The surviving IRGC leadership is motivated by survival itself. In many ways, they have embarked upon the largest martyrdom operation in modern geopolitical history. Their mosaic strategy — dispersed networks, proxy leverage, asymmetric disruption — succeeded in helping deliver strategic control over the Strait of Hormuz. And they appear willing to burn the region, and perhaps much of the global economy, rather than surrender that advantage.
As for Netanyahu, Israel’s campaign long ago moved beyond simple retaliation for the atrocities of October 7. Gaza has been devastated. Iran remains in the crosshairs. Israeli forces remain poised for further escalation. Yet Israel is now tethered politically to the corpse of the Trump administration. Netanyahu cannot risk unilateral escalation if there is even the slightest possibility Trump, in one of his infamous fits of rage or ego, suddenly turns on him.
And the rest of the world?
We stick fingers in our ears and sing loudly, pretending this catastrophe belongs only to “that region.” It does not.
There is no return to the world of February 27. Even if the guns fell silent tomorrow, the damage inflicted upon the international system would take years — perhaps decades — to repair.
But tribal loyalty blinds people.
Trump supporters will insist he is a misunderstood genius with a master plan. Netanyahu supporters will portray him as Israel’s indispensable saviour. IRGC loyalists will elevate martyrdom into strategic virtue, because movements that glorify death over life become extraordinarily difficult to deter. That lesson should have been learned during the War on Terror.
Yes, there be monsters out there.
And the truly terrifying part is that many of them genuinely believe themselves to be righteous.
They seem wilfully blind to the forces they are unleashing. Mass hunger leads to desperation. Desperation leads to migration. Mass migration fuels political extremism across the West. The populist right is already rising on precisely those fears. This crisis risks becoming a self-perpetuating cycle of instability feeding instability.
There is a degree of collective insanity in all this that I struggle to comprehend.
Yes, there be monsters out there.
And if this continues, they may yet consume us all.