FIDEL, a table, some papers, a glass of water. Behind him the portrait of Martí —standing, next to a wooden writing desk— the only luxury in the little room. It is the painting that we saw on television during the interview with the Venezuelan journalists and in photographs of meetings with various visitors in recent weeks. It is the Martí of the Jamaican photo, suited and with a watch on the lapel, in which the unknown painter has erased the verdure of the background, an image that moves, "like an obscure music that I do not understand well," as Fina García Marruz’s poetry would say.

This time Fidel’s auditorium is familiar to Cubans. On Sundays, the Cuban TV Roundtable is not shown and there are regular re-broadcasts of one of the programs of the week. It was not like that on August 22, when a group of regular panelists were invited to freely dialogue with Fidel: Randy Alonso, Arleen Rodríguez, Reinaldo Taladrid, Lázaro Barredo, Bárbara Betancourt, Nidia Díaz, Marina Menéndez, Oliver Zamora and Aixa Hevia. "What I need is that you ask me the most difficult questions that you can come up with," said the Comandante en Jefe, when he received us.

Lázaro Barredo began: "Some people think that you are being prophet of doom." Fidel thought: "To maintain that is almost a shame. And it is convenient that the people are ashamed of their ignorance. If people are ashamed of their ignorance, they are going to learn. And if they learn, there is a hope."

Nobody is counting on the war, he commented. "Some people are disposed to anything —Israel—. Others are prepared to confront the universal government which they want to impose—a world more horrible than anything that can be conceived is what the group of millionaires want to impose… "

The problem, he pointed out, is the new context that is emerging in this pre-war situation." The minimum number of nuclear weapons is calculated at 20,000. Cuban nuclear scientists confirm that there are 25,000 nuclear devices and I have said that they have a power 450,000 times greater than the one which destroyed Hiroshima. Do you know how many weapons they need to detonate in order to produce a total nuclear winter that would darken the world? One hundred."

One single partial war, for example, between India and Pakistan, "that single war between two countries weakened in terms of nuclear firepower, could produce that winter," he assured. On the basis of 25,000 nuclear weapons, .0004% of existing bombs would be enough to take the planet to the nuclear winter. "You see, the problem is a serious one," he emphasized.

ISRAEL

Randy and Taladrid commented on a news item that appeared on Saturday night in The New York Times: the U.S. government informed Israel that Iran will not have nuclear capacity for at least one year and therefore, no plan of attack is necessary for now.

"Yes, some journalists are saying that Iran has delays, because the parts for its nuclear plant are not very modern, are not of prime quality and that could set the project back. But in any event, to the Israelis it seems horrible that the Iranians are so close to possessing nuclear weapons, no matter when. Even if they are delayed by three years. That is something intolerable for the Israelis. And that is a reason to attack, if the yankis don’t attack," Fidel commented.

In the room nobody moves. The Comandante speaks slowly, measuring his words. In his hands he has a recent analysis from The Atlantic, an eminent Boston magazine, which argues the possibility of an imminent attack in the Persian Gulf. Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg maintains that Israel is preparing to bomb Iran, an affirmation that appears in the publication’s online edition and has generated an intense debate in the United States, some 15 responses from analysts, even before the article was published in the print edition.

"This journalist is presenting the position of the countries of the Middle East, which are afraid of Iran. They have such religious conflicts, such antagonisms that they must have reason to be scared. What are the Israelis leaving for the world? It doesn’t suit them to advise the yankis that Israeli planes have taken off, what they want to do is compromise the yankis. If things turn out badly, that would be the limit."

Fidel has invited to Cuba Daniel Estulin, author of the trilogy on the Bilderberg Club, a group made up of multimillionaires and influential politicians who meet in secret every year to decide the fate of the world. "Talking with him will help us to increase what I call ‘the force of persuasion,’" he affirmed.

He went on to comment on some of the 216 news agency cables referring to the conflict from June 1 through August 19, "Now we are on the 90-day countdown granted by the UN Security Council to commence the inspection of boats. That time period ends on September 9. Is Iran going to lose heart? What else is there for the United States to invent in the Security Council?"

The Comandante asked Randy to read out to everyone the draft of the Reflection that he had just finished, called "I am ready to continue discussing," in which he reiterates that President Barack Obama is the only person who can give the order to start a nuclear war. And, in response to a question from Taladrid on the role of Russia and China in the conflict, he insisted: "If (these two countries) join together to tell Obama very clearly that the conflict can be avoided, that force could be an enormous one."

The leader of the Revolution emphasized one psychological circumstance that has a bearing on events: "The Iranians believe that the Israelis aren’t going to dare, because that would be a very great insanity, and death does not frighten them (the Iranians)."

How are the Americans going to control, for example, Iraq, now that they have set about withdrawing their troops," Randy asked. "They cannot control that country. They’ve gotten themselves into a problem over which they have no control, within the old logic. But there is a new situation in which everything is changing. There is an old thinking and a new thinking, both related to the destructive capacity of these weapons and the danger of war."

In these circumstances, can Obama decide or can he not? "He has a constitutional power. He can decide. He has a Constitution that gives him the right to be the first to pull the trigger. Nothing more that that. And, for once, the sharkskin that allows him one wish and not three, like the central character in the (Balzac) novel. He can only ask for one thing. He can ask for peace."

KENNEDY

In an interval in the conversation, Taladrid commented on the interview that Fidel gave to the French journalist Jean Daniel, sent to Cuba by President John. F. Kennedy with the secret mission of exploring the possibilities of dialogue between the two countries.

On Friday, November 22, 1963, the day on which Kennedy was assassinated, the Comandante en Jefe and the journalist were having lunch in a house in Varadero and the telephone suddenly rang. They were given the news that Kennedy had been seriously wounded in Dallas. They immediately turned on a radio on which they heard the first details of the assassination. Jean Daniel recalls that Fidel was concerned: "this is terrible, now they’re going to say that we did it."

Taladrid said, "It made a great impression on Jean Daniel that you commented angrily how, at that moment so painful for the widow, the press went into morbid details like the blood running down her dress, and you said: ‘They have no decency.’ And then when the death of the president was announced, there was a silence and you commented: ‘Jean Daniel. This is the end of your mission.’"

"Nobody had to tell us anything—Fidel recalled—we heard the news on U.S. radio. I told him once: he (Kennedy) opened the possibility of the lifting of the blockade, which was what was doing us most damage."

Fidel affirmed that he had read the biography of 900 pages-plus dedicated to Kennedy by the historian Arthur Schlesinger. "He sold the theory that Oswald was the sole guilty party. That is the capitulation of an eminent intellectual. That book was very confusing, and it even confused me. I believed that the man who did the history was honest. But he consciously told a lie."

And he concluded, "Look how many things have happened. Hey, in 50 years some things have happened!" touched his forehead and added, "And look how many things have happened in 50 days as well!"

POLITICAL CHESS

On the results of the complex political chess game in which the fate of the human species is being played out, the Comandante en Jefe said to Arleen Rodríguez that "the yankis are in checkmate however intelligent they are…"

The system is collapsing, whether there is a war or not, he stated. "Everybody has to disarm. When they disarm the empire will disappear. Nobody can say how things are going to be. The only thing that we can say is how things cannot be… nobody is going to revive afterward the risk of a nuclear war. Are they going to construct nuclear weapons again? For what?"

Taladrid directed the dialogue to another important area of conflict: South East Asia, where the crisis has been temporally halted after talks between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China. "The Koreans told the Chinese the truth: they did not sink the Cheonan. But when they were blamed, they reacted by saying that they would not allow themselves to be destroyed. They could turn Seoul into a sea of flame… They are not going to let themselves receive the first strike after the war breaks out in Iran because they know that they would be immediately attacked. Definitely. There is absolutely no doubt about that."

Later the conversation turned toward our region. A hemisphere which did not count in past wars, but which today would have its quota of suffering and loss because of its link with the most powerful country and it being where some of the principal forces of the world power are based. "Colombia and Mexico could influence a change of events," he assured.

The risks of all kinds that a president with the characteristics of Obama has to confront –"he has to look after himself," said Fidel – of the real possibilities created for the release of the Five, and the Cuban experiences that have transformed the country’s most important leader into the best trained for seeing and warning about the dangers of a dramatic world conflagration, were covered in the last half hour of the meeting, which lasted for more than 120 minutes.

"It remains to be seen what will happen. Politicians from the United States are setting off touring the world and they do not know how to fix it. They have gotten themselves into a right tangle! And like 20 crossed wires. If they utilize nuclear weapons, everything will come apart. That has to be avoided. It is a new situation," he affirmed.

But, if nuclear war is predetermined, all the effort being made is worthless. Fidel was emphatic: "As things were going, that was going to occur. However, Obama still has his finger on the trigger and does not have much time to make a decision. Let’s prevent him from doing that. Everything that has to be done, has to be done now."