Transcription
So I had one little paragraph in which I said, "And finally, the bomb was used, and it was in the Middle East because in a conflict between Israelis and Arabs and Muslims, rationality dissolves and fear takes over." Yes.
Right now, war is raging across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is hitting record highs. Thousands are dead. And Washington is already debating boots on the ground. And as the world's leaders scramble for answers, Lee Kuan Yew, the late founding father of Singapore, predicted this exact scenario more than a decade ago, stating in 2012, "Iran's nuclear program is the challenge that the world is most likely to bungle. At some point, Israel has to decide whether, with or without U.S. support, whether to try and destroy Iran's hardened underground shelters. If Iran gets the bomb, then it is only a matter of time before there is a nuclear explosion in the region."
Here are the five warnings Lee gave that the world ignored and the one answer that could have prevented all of it. While the West sees Iran as a backwards, medieval regime, Lee saw them as far more capable and dangerous than most outsiders recognize, stating, "The Iranians are producing nuclear scientists. They are bright people, brighter than the Bedouin Arabs. The Iranians are fully aware that they are the only civilization in that region of that size. The Arab Bedouin Arabs, yes, they have money and all the oil, but they know that Iran is a very big power."
You see, Lee recognized that Iranians in the region have a history spanning thousands of years. Descendants of the Persian Empire that once stretched from Egypt to India, a civilization that gave the world algebra, founded modern chemistry, and mapped the stars centuries before Europe. Even today, under crippling sanctions, with its banking system cut off, and its scientists being assassinated, Iran has one of the fastest-growing rates of scientific output on Earth, has launched its own satellites into orbit, and produced the first woman in history to win the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It's this combination of civilizational depth and raw intellectual firepower that gives Iran a sense of pride and destiny that makes its ambitions fundamentally different from any other power in the region. Lee captured it perfectly when he recalled an Iranian minister saying there were really only two civilizations in Asia worth talking about: China and Persia. And as Lee put it, "Iranians are very proud of their history. They hanker after their glorious years of empire."
And this ideological fuel is precisely why attacking Iran is no ordinary military operation. Despite the assassination of its top leaders, Iran hasn't collapsed as many predicted. Within 72 hours, a new supreme leader was appointed. The IRGC launched waves of drones and missiles. The Strait of Hormuz was closed, and Iran is almost certainly accelerating its nuclear program underground as we speak. But here's where it gets really dangerous. Lee understood that attacking Iran isn't just a simple geopolitical conflict over oil or even nuclear weapons. It is a religious war, a thousand years in the making.
You see, Iran is the world's dominant Shia power. While most of the surrounding states follow Sunni Islam, their intense rivalry spans over a thousand years, rooted in a dispute over who should lead the faith after the Prophet Muhammad's death. And with roughly 200 million Shia Muslims spread across the world, Iran has spent decades building influence across every country where those populations live. As Lee explained, "Sunni Arab states are deeply suspicious of Iran because of the hold that Iran has on Shia minorities living across the region. Shiites are almost always loyal to Iran and not the countries where they live." You see, in Lebanon, Iran has Hezbollah on Israel's northern border. In Yemen, the Houthis strangling the Red Sea shipping lines. And in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is headquartered, 70% of the population is Shia, ruled by a Sunni monarchy, making it one of the most volatile flashpoints in the entire Gulf.
And what makes this even more alarming is that Lee believed the Sunni Gulf states, though wealthy and oil-rich, are ultimately an artificial construct dependent on American military protection for their survival. Remove that protection, and the entire regional order unravels. As he put it, "The only power that can counter the Iranians are the Americans. The Americans leave. Who fills the gap? Nobody. So, a regional power will take over. Who? Iran."
But perhaps most troubling of all is America's track record. Because time and again, Washington enters a Middle Eastern conflict, convinced that its power and its values can reshape ancient societies, but leaves behind a region more unstable, more radicalized, and more dangerous than it found. Lee called it out directly. "The problem with the Americans is that they go in believing they have the power to change the system. Time and again, they have been proven wrong. They have not changed the world." But you look at the way in which, uh, the United States has been trying to push democracy, uh, around the world, and you say, "Where have you succeeded?"
While Lee is not alive to witness today's events, he witnessed something similar in 2003 when George W. Bush went into Iraq, convinced by neoconservatives and Iraqi exiles that the country was ready for transformation. Lee said, "When the Americans announced their aspiration to democratize Iraq, I held my breath. It was a sign of hubris. It was a grave mistake." The result: $2 trillion spent, over 4,500 American soldiers dead, and over 300,000 Iraqis killed. And ironically, Iran emerged stronger than at any point in decades. As Lee observed, "After the invasion of Iraq, Iran has become stronger. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been an important counterweight to Iran in the region. But with that counterweight now gone, America is the major roadblock in Iran's bid to dominate the region."
The parallels with Iran today are deeply uncomfortable. Trump, like Bush, entered office surrounded by the same voices: Iranian diaspora lobbying for regime change, pro-Israel advisers, and neoconservatives who believed that sufficient American force could quickly take out the Islamic Republic. And this time, Washington didn't even bother to notify its allies before striking, leaving the world to scramble as oil markets and shipping lanes closed overnight. But as Lee always understood, the aftermath is where the real damage happens. Every bombed city and every power vacuum America leaves behind becomes a breeding ground for the next generation of extremists. The instability doesn't stay in the region. It spreads, and the world pays the price long after Washington has moved on to the next crisis.
But perhaps the most consequential cost of all isn't being paid in the Middle East. Lee always believed America's real strategic focus should be Asia, where China has spent decades quietly deepening ties, building infrastructure, and extending influence across the region, one deal at a time. The Middle East, in his view, was always a distraction from the contest that actually matters. "Now, if you do not hold your ground in the Pacific, you cannot be a world leader. The world leader must hold his ground in the Pacific." In fact, this week, the United States has begun withdrawing its THAAD missile defense system from South Korea to replenish arsenals burned through fighting Iran, leaving its most critical Asian allies increasingly exposed as Washington's attention, resources, and military hardware all flow in the wrong direction.
Now, some argue Trump is playing 4D chess, that striking Iran is really about cutting off China's oil supply and strangling Beijing's economy. While it sounds credible, Iranian oil tankers carrying Chinese crude are still moving through the Strait of Hormuz. And China, anticipating exactly this scenario, has spent the last decade diversifying its energy sources from Russian pipeline gas to a domestic renewables push that has reduced its vulnerability considerably. Far from being squeezed, China is watching its main rival exhaust its military, deplete its arsenals, and slowly hollow out its presence in Asia.
And lastly, and most frighteningly, Iran's nuclear program. Years before his death in 2015, Lee had already warned of this exact scenario. He predicted that even if America or Israel struck Iran's nuclear facilities, it would not be enough, stating, "Can you eliminate the whole of Iran? Before long, they will develop a second bomb. But this time, it will be deep underground." That prediction is now playing out in real time. Last year, American bombers struck Fordo, Iran's most hardened underground nuclear facility, and the Trump administration declared victory. But rather than destroying the program, the strikes potentially forced Iran to rebuild its nuclear program, though this is currently being disputed. Regardless, Lee was convinced that the only way to truly stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon wasn't through air strikes, but rather a dangerous ground invasion, stating, "I am not convinced that Iran can be prevented by Israel from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Americans can do the job, but only if they are prepared to launch a ground invasion."
And here's what makes this truly terrifying. If Iran survives and rebuilds, every government in the region draws the same conclusion at the same time: that American protection is worthless, that no security guarantee is ironclad, and that the only rational response is to get your own bomb. And Lee saw exactly where that leads, stating, "I'm not sure in the Middle East there is enough of the rational to hold back the impetuous. Something can go desperately wrong, and the fallout could spread across continents."
Last night, I had the foreign minister of Iran here. Yes. For a long conversation. Yeah. Says that they're ready to be engaged about the bomb. That they don't really want the bomb. Yeah. You don't believe that, do you? They're willing. It'd be impolite for me to express my uh disbelief. But I think anybody who says he doesn't want a bomb, uh, if he can get one, isn't really being honest. Because, because the Pakistanis have the bomb, so why not they? The Israelis have a bomb. Why not they? No, it's a dangerous world. That.
So after all of that, Lee Kuan Yew was asked, "What is the best path forward?" His answer, "That is a question 2,000 Jews in America must answer." You see, Lee understood that the Israel lobby holds enormous influence on foreign policy in Washington. More than a decade ago, Lee called a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian issue the single most important step toward wider peace in the region, stating, "Because of the pro-Israel policy, the Jewish lobby has succeeded in forging for America. A hardline stance is allowed to prevail in the Israeli leadership. The best solution is to find a permanent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That I have got to, for the next generation of Israelis, I have got to find a way to peace. Absolutely. Because otherwise is endless wars or tensions and the danger eventually of a holocaust."
But with Gaza now destroyed, Tehran in ruins, Tel Aviv under attack, and the Middle East potentially sliding toward a nuclear arms race, his most devastating prediction is now coming true. That means a less stable world with the frightening possibility of miscalculation. We could see the first use of nuclear weapons since the Second World War in this region. Perhaps the only consoling thought is that if there ever is a nuclear exchange, the clouds might not reach us here in Southeast Asia. They will cover large parts of the Middle East and might reach Europe. We might get some droplets.