THE ORACLE OF DELPHI ON IRAN, TRUMP AND OUR FUTURE - IMMORTALITY OR SELF-DESTRUCTION?
A Face in the Crowd (1957) by Elia Kazan
One of the most prophetic American films ever made. A folksy populist, "Lonesome" Rhodes, is plucked from obscurity by a TV network, becomes a national star, builds a cult of millions, is courted by senators and presidential hopefuls - and is finally caught on a hot mic calling his own followers "morons" and "idiots" he can manipulate at will - it feels like a documentary about now. Lesson: democracy dies when entertainment replaces policies.
DELPHI - Do Donald Trump’s wars mark the beginning of the end of America's global empire and influence - the Iran war, tariff wars, and a war against liberal democracy inside his own country? Or will the United States, at its 250th birthday, manage a political, moral and global turnaround?
Trump attended the White House Correspondents Dinner last night in Washington, and tried to improve his toxic relationship with the US press, but at the Delphi Economic Forum this week, there were no signs of reflection and correction by Trump’s allies - in difference to Philip Rycroft (former Secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union), who admitted this week that the UK should return to the EU, as the economy has not flourished but suffered: Steve Bannon, who made Trump president in 2016 with the illegal help of the Russians and Cambridge Analytica, fantasised virtually about stolen elections in 2020 again, Breitbart's Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle kept praising "the best government and the best president America has ever had." and the Heritage Foundation propagated the goals of Project 2025, the policy blueprint they published in 2023, much of which is now being implemented in Trump's second term.
Trump's advocates spoke as if Minneapolis had never happened, as if people in America and many other countries were not suffering from a failing economy and rising energy prices, as if the Republicans were not losing nearly every election this year, as if Pam Bondi had not protected Epstein in Florida for years and had not resigned as Attorney General of the United States in order to avoid being questioned under oath, as if Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had not been fired for disasters such as inhumane ICE brutality, as if Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel turned up every morning sober for work as Secretary of Defense and as FBI Director to keep their country safe - and not being regularly intoxicated. According to the New York Times a special FBI squad had to break doors at one occasion to find missing Patel, who had gone “awol”. Hegseth had been so intoxicated that he had to be carried out of official events, and Secretary Bessent called the Strait of Hormuz in a White House briefing for reporters “the Strait of Vermouth” - which is an alcoholic product from Italy.
Or perhaps there is an assessment that there is no need for sober reflection as Trump might plan to sabotage the midterms and does not care too much about such reality? JD Vance's philosopher Curtis Yarvin stated a while ago that Trump is biologically suitable to be a monarch. When I spoke to Yarvin in London, I forgot to ask him whether this qualification to be King comes possibly with the blond hair, blue eyes and German heritage?
So, what is the truth now - I asked the Oracle of Delphi:
Trump as best president ever (Bill, please forgive this question) - or America in shambles, dragging the world into authoritarian tribalism and chaos?
Greatest commander-in-chief of all time (not the one 100 years ago!) and saviour of humanity, with the Nobel Peace Prize already booked - or the man who prolongs the war in Ukraine for his buddy Vladimir Putin, and puts the Middle East on fire like nobody ever before, inventing peace deals with Iran which do not exist?
Oh, and after watching Melania’s film, I also ask: maybe not Fascists, but Fashionistas?
Standing at the Oracle at the Apollon Temple - the very place where the intoxicated Oracle of Delphi spoke - I am reminded that Zeus had thrown down a piece of rock between two eagles to mark here the centre of the world.
Instead of hearing the Oracle's answer, I keep hearing repeating loops in my mind of Bannon, Breitbart and Heritage Foundation, and as a matter of mental emergency, I help myself by borrowing an audioguide, which gives me finally the Oracle's answer. It has not changed in 2,500 years:
The Oracle once told King Croesus of Lydia that if he crossed the Halys River to make war on Persia, a great empire would fall. Croesus crossed - and it was his own empire that collapsed.
What needs to happen to prevent the American Empire from collapsing?
1. Midterms
US citizens will need to protect democracy through the November 2026 midterm elections; otherwise America will isolate itself from the world, lose not only democracy, but also its financial markets and foreign investments, and fall into a crisis it will not be able to manage. Under no circumstances may the midterm elections be questioned. Police and military must be prepared to withstand any orders leading to dictatorship. Minneapolis serves as a warning how civil unrest can be provoked on the pathway of declaring a state of emergency and insurrection.
2. Iran
America will need to find a quick solution to resolve the energy and security crisis. Eventhough the US hit up to 1000 targets per day/night in Iran, no regime change and recovery and seizure of enriched uranium is in sight. The war has quicklly become a loose-loose operation for all. How can a peace deal look like? The 2015 Iran agreement (JCPOA), negotiated under Obama, lifted sanctions in exchange for verifiable nuclear restrictions and was widely regarded as the most successful non-proliferation agreement in a generation, until Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States in May 2018. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told me yesterday that the JCPOA framework - updated for today's realities - could still serve as a blueprint for stopping the Iran war: "Trump could earn praise by improving the treaty."
The World Forum & Cinema for Peace suggest such a peace plan for Iran: [LINK].
I asked Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli Foreign Minister and politician who beat Netanyahu in the 2009 elections, whether there is any better option. Her answer was sobering: "Under the current circumstances, we can only choose between the least bad options."
3. Israel and Palestine
If Trump keeps democracy alive in the US, respects election results and resolves - as the first President ever - this conflict, he still has a chance for partial greatness and praise.
Bill Clinton had offered Yassir Arafat a Palestinian State already more than 25 years ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an even better offer some 10 years later, which Palestinian leadership denied to both, but which still can serve as a blueprint for a solution (LINK). After October 7, the majority of Israeli society is against a Two-State solution, fearing further lethal attacks. At the same time it becomes clear to the citizens that Israel will not become safer by terrorizing the Palestinians and by committing crimes against humanity. Olmert and Livni both said that the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is not acceptable, and that an international security force should already have been deployed when the peace agreement was reached, possibly led by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Its absence has given Hamas the room to rebuild and grow stronger again.
According to the UN, more than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, the majority women and children. Netanyahu wants the war to continue until Israel's next election in order to win it - but recent polls suggest his coalition would secure only around 50 of the 120 Knesset seats, far below a majority. The next Government could include Arab parliamentarians again, giving hope for an end to settler violence, apartheid measures, and war crimes.
Meanwhile, the question of Palestinian leadership remains unresolved:
The President of the Palestinian Authority Abbas and his old guard have not proven any progressive steps and no will for elections after 20 years.
Marwan Barghouti is widely considered the "Mandela of Palestine"; polls consistently show he would defeat both Hamas and Fatah candidates in any free Palestinian election. Olmert allowed Knesset members to meet him in prison and lead moderate discussions, but today he appears “as a black box” to Israel, which has treated him very badly in recent years - nobody knows how he would govern if released. It does not currently seem to be an option for Israel to pardon his sentence for murders.
Mohammed Dahlan, originally from Gaza and now living in wealth in Dubai, has shown no interest yet in returning to lead the Palestinians.
Salam Fayyad, the former Prime Minister - praised by all sides as serious and reliable, even though he opposed Israeli policies like his colleagues did - was sidelined because he fought corruption and challenged the old guard.
I tried to convince Fayyad for two years to make himself available, as we worked well with him when we built - with the help of the German Foreign Office and current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier - Cinema Jenin, with director Marcus Vetter, whom we had honoured at Cinema for Peace for the film The Heart of Jenin, together with Ismail Khatib, the father of Ahmed Khatib (11), who was shot by accident by an Israeli soldier and whose organs saved Jewish children. At the opening of the cinema, Fayyad spoke, and the Jewish Orthodox girl with the donated Palestinian heart appeared as a surprise guest to cut the ribbon.
Fayyad is teaching at Princeton university and declined several times, but an emotional call from Ramallah, where his former colleagues, which I put on my video phone, said how much he was needed, finally made him consider a role. Unfortunately, Steve Witkoff never responded and never called Fayyad after we shared the good news with him and suggested having Fayyad co-lead the board of technocrats to rebuild Gaza and prepare elections in the next few years.
Right now there is a vacuum, surrounded by the entourage of Mahmoud Abbas, who is more than 90 years old, with speculation about who will take over. This will not be a pattern for the future.
4. Ukraine and Russia
With the United States stepping back and focusing on Iran, Ukraine has appealed this week to Turkey to take on a mediating role in peace negotiations. President Trump's envoy for Venezuela and former US Ambassador to Berlin Richard Grenell, told me recently in Los Angeles that "we are done in Ukraine; the Europeans need to resolve this."This week there was some hope that President Erdoğan could facilitate a process, but President Putin has answered that he will not meet his Ukrainian counterpart unless there is already a final agreement on the table.
If America wants to keep leading the world, it will need to stop the war and resolve the conflict together with the Europeans.The World Forum suggests, for the disputed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - which are now under Russian control but claimed by Russia and Ukraine alike - to invite international peacekeeping troops, create a buffer zone of 20 kilometres, allow inhabitants to live on both sides, and freeze the ownership question for 20 years until a referendum can be held in the disputed areas.
The Oracle's Lesson, Today
If the Oracle of Delphi predicts the policy of Trump, the prophecy is the same as it was for Croesus: one leading empire will fall. Whether it is the American empire, or Iran in the short term and China in the long term, depends on whether the United States, at its 250th birthday, can rediscover the political, moral and ethical compass that turned 13 colonies into an indispensable nation
America's leadership would be needed urgently, as the human race might be fighting for its survival, and the center of today’s world is Silicon Valley. We asked the Oracle: Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Will the human race survive - or merge with the machines? Are we entering the age of singularity that Isaac Asimov predicted in the 1960s and Stanley Kubrick touched in 2001: A Space Odyssey?If we manage to control AI for the benefit of humankind and to flourish, I am sure that we will see the end of most sicknesses within the next 10 to 15 years, and the end of death within the next 20 years. By 2045, we will probably not only merge with AI and reach the singularity - we will also become, if we wish to, immortal. Our board member Prof. Sinclair is reprogramming human cells since this year. Futurist Ray Kurzweil expects the Longevity escape velocity as soon as 2032: we will age slower than we rejuvenate. But to get there, humanity will first have to survive the wars and the political madness of our present moment, which can easily lead to self destruction in a scenario such as in the film “Terminator”. The choice between immortality and self-destruction is not only a metaphor for our species in the age of AI. It is also the choice in front of America today.
ELECTIONS IN PALESTINE
RAMALLAH - first elections in years, partly groundbreaking with one Gaza district connected to voting in west bank, partially a mockery with no candidates or”acclamation” of Fatah candidates in Ramallah and nebulous instead of a real pluralistic vote, showing that Fata and PLO or not the bodies to lead Palestinians into a new future.
Local elections were held on Saturday 25 April 2026 and they matter far more than their scale suggests. Around one million Palestinians were called to vote across 184 of 421 local councils, choosing among more than 5,000 candidates in the fifth local election in Palestine and the first since the Gaza war began. In the West Bank, contested races covered 90 municipal councils (3,773 candidates) and 93 village councils (1,358 candidates). In Gaza, the vote took place in only one city: Deir al-Balah, with 70,000 eligible voters choosing among 60 candidates on four nominally independent, moderate, service-oriented lists - none affiliated with Hamas or Fatah, all stressing transparency, public services, and a clean break from partisan politics. At least 16 of the 60 Gaza candidates are women, a striking contrast to 2006, when women's representation was a fraction of this and politics was dominated by Hamas and Fatah factions. Hamas officially boycotted both votes but committed to respect the results.
Deir al-Balah was the only Gaza city where the Central Elections Commission could organise a vote, because the rest of the Strip is still under Hamas control, in active conflict, or destroyed. The CEC could not coordinate with either Israel or Hamas and was unable to deliver ballot papers, ballot boxes or ink into Gaza. It was the first vote in Gaza in 20 years - since Hamas won the 2006 legislative election and seized full control a year later. After two decades of Hamas governance by appointment rather than ballot, this is the first real opening for a new generation of pragmatic, technocratic, and secular Palestinian leaders - exactly the kind any future Palestinian state will need. If the Deir al-Balah model works, the PA intends to expand it to the rest of Gaza.
The political reading
Three caveats matter. First, this is the only electoral channel left: there have been no national elections since 2006, leaving the Fatah-ruled PA in power 17 years after its mandate expired. Second, the system was reshaped to sideline Hamas and other rejectionist factions - in January, Abbas decreed that all candidates must accept the PLO programme (recognition of Israel, renunciation of armed struggle), and five Palestinian factions (PFLP, DFLP, People's Party, FIDA, Mubadara) rejected this and refused to participate. Third, "acclamation" is doing a lot of work: 42 municipal councils and 155 village councils - including major West Bank cities like Ramallah and Nablus - are being filled by single-list, uncontested acclamation, which reflects Fatah consolidation rather than democratic competition. Turnout was 24.53% by 1:00 pm, suggesting modest engagement.
These elections preserve the form of Palestinian self-government while the substance - sovereign decision-making, a functioning national legislature, and full inclusion of Gaza, Jerusalem ID holders, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the diaspora - remains absent.
What the next elections should look like
For the next round to mean more than a governance ritual, three things need to change. At the local level, candidacy filters should remain - Hamas excluded as long as it retains armed wings and rejects Israel's right to exist - but within those boundaries the field must be genuinely open to leftist factions, independents, civil society lists, and reformist Fatah dissidents. Acclamation should return to being the exception, not the norm. The four-year cycle should be enforced by an independent body, not the presidency by decree. At the national level, presidential and legislative elections - frozen since 2006 - must be restored, with a unified voter roll covering the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, a transparent and judicially reviewable vetting process, international observation with real access, and a clear pathway for excluded factions to re-enter politics if they renounce violence and accept the two-state framework. At the structural level, no electoral reform alone can solve the deeper problem: the PA governs under occupation. The realistic path forward is a sequenced process - local elections (this round, properly conducted), legislative elections within 12–18 months, then a presidential vote - paired with a political track clarifying the actual powers of elected bodies, and an honest answer on the diaspora question, since more than half of Palestinians live outside the territories.
The minimum test of whether the next elections matter is whether elected officials hold actual authority, and whether the eligibility rules are applied evenhandedly rather than weaponised against Fatah's reformist critics. If filters end up excluding not just Hamas but every credible challenger to the ruling party, the exclusion of rejectionist factions will have served as cover for something else entirely.
The Analysis of The World Forum Special Envoy Gershon Baskin, who helped the peace agreement and release of hostages last year with backchannel negotiations between Hamas and US administration:
"These elections for municipal governments in Palestine were most noteworthy because of the launch of a new political movement - the Palestinian Moderates Party. This party organised itself in three short weeks with very limited resources. The party ran in nine municipalities and won an absolute majority in three of them. They now have a foothold in six others, including the only city that conducted elections in Gaza, Deir al-Balah, with 16% of the vote there. This list ran against the organised and heavily funded Fatah lists of Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas was not allowed to participate, but Hamas did not call to boycott the elections. Now the challenge is to use this platform to create a new national political movement in Palestine for moderation, peace, and two states."