Nuclear War, the United Nations, and Permanent Crisis

War, apocalyptic prophecy, and emergency governance are converging into a doctrine of permanent crisis. This is what we are being asked to accept - and why we must refuse. By Shabnam Palesa Mohamed

Permanent crisis is being used to normalize centralized power, militarized policy, and moral numbness.

Two days ago, a veteran participant in the United Nations system stepped back in protest. Muhammad Safa, who has represented PVA in UN forums and committees, announced that he was suspending his duties. Safa said:

“I don’t think people understand the gravity of the situation as the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use on Iran.

This is a picture of Tehran. For you uneducated, untraveled, never-served, warhawks licking your chops at the thought of bombing it. It’s not some low population desert. There are families, children, family pets. Regular working class people with dreams. You’re sick to want war.

Tehran is a city of nearly 10,000,000 people. Imagine nuking Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, or beyond, bombed with nuclear weapons.

I gave up my diplomatic career to leak this information. I suspended my duties so as not to be part of or a witness to this crime against humanity, in an attempt to prevent a nuclear winter before it is too late.”

At the time of writing, his warning was publicly unverified. But it should not be dismissed. It reflects the seriousness with which many are now viewing the risk of regional escalation, and what it could mean for the world. The clock is ticking. People need to decide which side of history they stand on.

“If we go, everyone goes.”

I keep coming back to the story of Samson. Not the Sunday school version, where he is remembered as a strongman with a tragic weakness. The other version. The one at the end, when he is blinded, chained, and grinding grain in a Philistine prison. They bring him out to entertain the crowd. He asks the boy leading him to let him feel the pillars. Then he prays: let me die with the Philistines. He pulls the temple down on everyone, himself included.

That is the version Israeli strategists are said to have named a doctrine after: the Samson Option. The idea is simple and terrifying - that if the state faces destruction, it will take the region, and perhaps far more, down with it. Nuclear weapons become the pillars. The message is always the same: if we go, everyone goes.

This is not a conspiracy theory. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about it in The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. What has become known as the “Samson Option” refers to Israel’s presumed last-resort nuclear deterrence posture.

Regardless of how one frames the legal or moral legitimacy of “Israel,” I have been thinking about what it means to build a ‘state’ on that threat. To raise children in a place whose survival depends on the world believing you are irrational enough to end everything. To call that strategy and pretend it is not barbarism.

The Other Story They’re Telling

In America, they have their own version of the temple. For generations, sections of evangelical Christianity have treated the end times not as a warning, but as a script. In that telling, the return of Christ requires certain things to happen first: the gathering of Jews in Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple, war, suffering, fire.

When they believe the world is destined to burn, they do not work to put out the fires. They stop seeing them as fires at all. They see prophecy unfolding. They see the hand of God moving toward the final act. And we make sure we are on the right side when the curtain falls.

Whether or not policymakers themselves believe this literally, Christian Zionist and apocalyptic narratives have shaped part of the political constituency surrounding US Middle East policy. The war machine keeps moving. The bombs keep falling. And the same theological imagination that sanctifies violence keeps finding political expression.

The Authority the UN Is Trying to Take

There is something else happening beneath all of this. Something that does not get discussed in the same breath as Samson and prophecy, but in my view, belongs there.

In 2023, the UN Secretary-General released a series of policy briefs as part of the UN’s ‘Common Agenda’ in preparation for the Summit of the Future. [Policy Brief 2](LINK: UN Policy Brief 2) was titled:

“Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks – An Emergency Platform.”

Here is what the Secretary-General proposed:

“I propose that the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach.”

Not may convene. Not shall consult Member States. “Standing authority to convene automatically.”

What counts as a “complex global shock”? The policy brief lists examples:

• Large-scale climatic or environmental events causing major socioeconomic disruptions

• Future pandemics with cascading secondary impacts

• High-impact events involving a biological agent, deliberate or accidental

• Events leading to disruptions to global flows of goods, people, or finance

• Large-scale destructive or disruptive activity in cyberspace

• A major event in outer space causing severe disruptions to critical systems on Earth

• Unforeseen “black swan” events

The Secretary-General is explicit: the platform should be “agnostic as to the type of crisis” because “we do not know what type of global shock we may face in the future.”

That means the category is intentionally broad. It could include war, nuclear escalation, pandemic scenarios, cyber disruptions, or whatever crisis is deemed severe enough to trigger transnational coordination.

Once activated, the Emergency Platform would bring together:

• Leaders from Member States

• The UN system

• International financial institutions

• Regional bodies

• Civil society

• The private sector

• Other experts

The platform would, in its own words, “actively promote and drive an international response” and “ensure that all participating actors make commitments that can contribute meaningfully.”

On the surface, the Emergency Platform is not a standing world government. It does not create binding global law. But it does reveal a clear institutional ambition: to normalize rapid, centralized coordination across governments, finance, civil society, and the private sector during transnational crises.

And that is where people should be paying attention. Because the proposal asks Member States to give the Secretary-General standing authority to convene this machinery automatically. Not to ask permission. Not to wait for debate. To activate a crisis architecture when he decides a shock is severe enough.

If you hold power, this sounds like efficiency. If you do not, it sounds like technocratic rule by another World Economic Forum favourite: The Great Reset.

The Thread Between Them

There is a logic that connects the Samson Option, American apocalypticism, and the Emergency Platform proposal. It is the logic of inevitability dressed as governance.

The Samson Option says: we are willing to end everything rather than lose.

Apocalyptic Christian Zionism says: the end is coming anyway, so why stop it?

The Emergency Platform proposal says: when the shock comes - and it will come - someone must be in charge. It should be us.

Three different languages. One message: “Permanent crisis is being used to normalize centralized power, militarized policy, and moral numbness.”

The people with power intend to keep it. And they are building the military, legal, and theological frameworks to make sure that when the crisis comes - whether it is war, a nuclear event, a pandemic, or something they decide to call one - they are the ones holding the pillars. They choose.

Choosing Courage: The Lesson of Karbala

There is another story. Not about inevitability, but about choice. Not about power, but about refusal.

In 680 CE, on the plain of Karbala, Hussein ibn Ali stood with a small band of family and companions against the army of the Umayyad caliph. They were surrounded. They were denied water. They were told to submit. And they refused. One by one, they were killed. Hussein was martyred. His body was desecrated. His women and children were marched in chains to Damascus.

For fourteen centuries, Shia tradition has carried this memory not as defeat, but as witness. The powerful won that day, as they often do in battle. But the story of Karbala is not about who won. It is about who refused to bow.

I think about that when I watch what is happening now - in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran. In the hospitals that are bombed. In the families that are erased. The same shape appears: a people surrounded, denied water, told that their existence is the problem. And still, they refuse to bow.

The refusal at Karbala was not about winning. It was about saying no. No to submission. No to the idea that power gets to decide who lives and who dies. No to giving up on humanity. That is the moral choice before us now.

What We’re Being Asked to Accept

The Samson Option is a threat dressed as a doctrine. American apocalypticism is a fantasy dressed as faith. The UN’s Emergency Platform proposal is a technocratic coordination mechanism dressed as humanitarian necessity.

Together, they create a world where violence becomes inevitable, grief becomes irrelevant, and the only choice we are offered is which pillar we want to die under.

But Karbala tells us something different. It tells us that the story does not end with the powerful. That memory is stronger than armies. That refusal is a kind of victory. That there is dignity in resistance. That legacies remain.

The men with their doctrines and their prophecies and their protocols will keep building their temples. They will keep threatening to pull them down on all of us. They will keep telling us there is nothing we can do.

But we can refuse. We can refuse to accept that some lives are expendable. We can refuse to let the same powers that create crises control how we respond to them. We can refuse to look away. That is not inevitability. That is choice. And it is the only thing that has ever saved us.

Safa closed his message by warning that millions of people had already taken to the streets in the United States under the banner of “No Kings”, and that the possibility of nuclear escalation must be taken seriously.

“Yesterday, nearly ten million people protested “No Kings” in the United States. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons must be taken very seriously. It’s dangerous. Act now. Spread this message worldwide. Take the streets. Protest for our humanity and future. Only the people can stop it. History will remember us.”

He is right about at least this much: Only the people can stop it. It’s time to get organised - before permanent emergency becomes permanent rule.

Sources / Notes

• Publicly circulated statement attributed to Muhammad (Mohamad) Safa, describing his suspension of duties as PVA Main Representative at the UN and from related committees/groups.

• Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (1991).

• On the term “Samson Option” as a presumed Israeli last-resort nuclear deterrence posture / massive retaliation concept.

• United Nations, Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 2: Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks – An Emergency Platform (March 2023).

• Reporting on the “No Kings” protests in the United States indicating turnout in the millions, with some estimates exceeding 8 million.