Eating Tehrani Grass, While Washington's Reason Returns

Seven Years on a Diet of Grass

In the altered theatre of 2026 geopolitics, where Donald Trump’s second act is no longer conjecture but wars of impulse, an ancient question presses itself upon us with renewed urgency: can a leader, swollen with self-attributed glory, descend into a form of madness akin to that of King Nebuchadnezzar—until reason is restored not by counsel, but by consequence?

The book of Daniel offers no ambiguity. Babylon’s ruler stood upon his palace and declared, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). The judgement was swift. Pride severed him from reason. Restoration came only after humiliation.

A gas flare on an oil production platform is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf July 25, 2005. (Photo: REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/File) Credit: OurToday

Trump 2.0 does not mirror that story in literal form, but its contours are disturbingly familiar. Yet the present moment differs from earlier fears. Some anticipated ambitions have stalled or proven impracticable. Canada remains sovereign. Greenland is not for sale. Cuba, long a fixation of rhetorical hostility, has not yet become the next theatre of intervention.

Even Iran, though again under intense pressure, resists easy narratives of imminent transformation. The world, it turns out, is not a negotiable asset class. Reality has pushed back.

And yet, the deeper concern was never about territorial acquisition. It was about temperament—about a governing philosophy that elevates personal instinct above institutional wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar’s error was not merely pride; it was the erasure of interdependence. He ceased to recognise the scaffolding of counsel, law, and moral restraint that made his reign possible. In that sense, the modern parallel persists.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while signing executive orders during a brief event in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz) Credit: OurToday

Trump’s leadership continues to display a marked impatience with complexity. International agreements are treated less as accumulated frameworks of trust than as encumbrances to be discarded. The language of absolutes—of “total authority” reborn in new forms—has not disappeared; it has adapted. Even where practical constraints have moderated earlier ambitions, the underlying instinct remains: to personalise power.

Smoke rises following an explosion in Tehran, Iran, March 1, 2026. (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via REUTERS) Credit: OurToday

This is where the warning of Daniel becomes instructive. Nebuchadnezzar was not undone by external enemies. Babylon did not fall at that moment to foreign invasion. Rather, the crisis was internal—a collapse of judgment rooted in self-exaltation. The king became incapable of perceiving reality accurately. That is the essence of the “beastly” condition: not savagery alone, but disconnection from truth.

In today’s world, such disconnection does not manifest in fields and grazing, but in policy distortions. Iran, for instance, presents not a binary problem but a layered one—regional, nuclear, ideological. Yet approaches grounded in maximalist pressure risk narrowing strategic vision. The situation in Venezuela, now effectively concluded in terms of regime transition, illustrates both the reach and the limits of external influence. Success in one arena can breed overconfidence in another. History repeatedly shows that geopolitical terrains differ in ways that resist replication.

Similarly, the enduring hostility towards Cuba, while politically resonant in certain quarters, has yielded diminishing strategic returns. The Caribbean watches closely. Policies driven by symbolism rather than mutual benefit tend to isolate not the intended target, but the policymaker. Even allies grow weary of rigidity masquerading as principle.

People walk on the street in downtown Havana, Cuba, November 21, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File) Credit: OurToday

The modern “Daniels” have not been silent. Diplomats, analysts, and historians continue to caution against the concentration of decision-making in narrow circles. They warn that alliances, once frayed, are not easily rewoven; that credibility, once diminished, cannot be restored by assertion alone. Yet their voices compete with a political culture that rewards Truth Social’s certainty over nuance.

This is the crux of the matter. Nebuchadnezzar’s transformation into a beast was not merely punishment; it was a revelation. Stripped of illusion, he confronted his own limitations. In contemporary terms, the danger lies not in theatrical excess, but in strategic miscalculation—decisions made within echo chambers that mistake affirmation for accuracy.

One must also acknowledge a constraint absent in ancient Babylon: the resilience of modern institutions. Courts, legislatures, and international frameworks impose limits that no single leader can easily override. These have, thus far, prevented the more extravagant ambitions from materialising. They serve, in effect, as guardrails against full descent.

Yet institutions are not self-sustaining. They rely upon a shared commitment to their legitimacy. When leadership consistently tests their boundaries, even without breaching them entirely, the cumulative effect is erosion. The danger, therefore, is gradual rather than dramatic—a slow drift towards governance by impulse.

Dennis A. Minott, PhD.

Restoration, in the biblical account, begins with recognition. “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored.”(Daniel 4:30). The gesture is symbolic: an acknowledgement of limits, of accountability beyond oneself. In modern governance, this translates into respect for process, for expertise, for the delicate balance between national interest and global stability.

The question, then, is not whether Trump will enact some literal analogue of eating grass. That would be a stretch of crude reading. Rather, it is whether leadership will remain tethered to reality, or whether it will drift into a self-referential loop where power validates itself. The former sustains nations; the latter exhausts them.

History is unsentimental. It distinguishes between those who consolidate stability and those who mistake spectacle for strength. The Marshall Plan endures as a model of strategic generosity; countless monuments to ego have vanished into obscurity. Legacy is not secured by volume, but by vision.

The moral, therefore, extends beyond one individual. Washington, Jerusalem, Tehran—all operate within their own narratives of exceptionalism. Each risks the same error: to believe that power exempts them from consequence. Daniel’s account reminds us otherwise. Authority is conditional. It is granted, tested, and, if abused, withdrawn.

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as military strikes are launched against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis over the group’s attacks against Red Sea shipping, at an unspecified location in this handout image released March 15, 2025. (Photo: White House/Handout via REUTERS) Credit: OurToday

Trump may never face a moment of theatrical unravelling. The modern world is too mediated, too managed for such stark displays. But the subtler form of “madness”—the steady substitution of instinct for insight—is no less consequential. Nations need not collapse dramatically to decline; they need only lose their capacity for self-correction.

So, could Trump “eat grass”? Not in the fields of Babylon or the gardens of Mar-a-Lago. But the metaphor endures. To lead without humility, to govern without listening, to act without reckoning—these are the contemporary equivalents. And they carry their own form of exile.

Heaven, one might say, still watches. But in a democratic age, so too do voters—and history, which is the final and unforgiving judge.

by Dennis A. Minott, PhD.

March 21, 2026