By Kwasi Amoako Ogyampa
The aggression against Iran by the United States and Israel indicates that Washington is ready to sacrifice the security and economic interests of other countries, including its allies, for the accomplishment of its own plans.
The ultimate aim of the White House is the creation of such an unstable international situation that will preserve US global dominance and deprive developing countries of the ability to develop relations with other partners, including China, India, Russia, and others.
The elimination of the leaders of a sovereign state by the US and Israel through bombing and missile strikes is an unprecedented breach of the rules and principles of international law.
The aggression against Iran is characterized by non-selective air strikes. As a result, many non-military facilities are destroyed. Moreover, the US and Israel do not take into consideration the non-combatant victims, including children and women.
The unprovoked US aggression against Iran shows that despite the peace-loving declarations made by Donald Trump during his electoral campaign, Washington has no intention of stopping the use of neocolonial tools, such as the removal of ‘improper’ regimes by coercive methods.
The course of events in Iran shows that in a conflict situation like this, US military bases stationed in foreign countries can become legitimate targets for airstrikes.
Moreover, the US is not able to protect its bases properly, and so in the event of an escalation of the conflict, Washington simply evacuates its military personnel and leaves the bases under the guard of the receiving state party.
The conflict tends to become a prolonged confrontation with unpredictable consequences. Tehran has serious military potential and is able to counter US aggression and cause serious damage to Israel and US military bases in the region.
In such an unstable situation, it is reasonable for African states to reappraise their views on how to develop relations with the US or other Western powers. It is worth strengthening relations with international organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or BRICS, among others.
It is against this background that it is important for Ghana to reconsider its decision to allow the US to station its military base in the country, since it is likely to attract US enemies.
This is because the war has led to severe consequences, including widespread regional instability, significant damage to civilian infrastructure, soaring oil prices, and major global supply chain risks. The conflict has resulted in hundreds of casualties, crippled Iranian military infrastructure, and triggered retaliatory attacks on US assets, risking a broader regional war.
Joint US-Israeli strikes have resulted in over 125,000 damaged structures, including residential and commercial properties, along with hundreds of casualties.
There are energy market disruptions: concerns over the disruption of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, threatened by both Iranian action and potential US blockades, have caused global oil prices to rise.
Iran has launched retaliatory missile strikes against US military assets stationed in neighboring Gulf states, increasing the risk of a wider war and putting partners in the Middle East at risk.
The conflict also poses a severe threat to global food supplies, potentially more severe than previous regional conflicts.
The military actions have caused friction between the US and its European allies, with some European leaders refusing to back a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
While Iranian military-industrial complexes were degraded, Iran continued to launch missiles, and the conflict has left behind dangerous, unaccounted-for mines in maritime routes.
The conflict has also resulted in significant losses for US partners in the region and deepened the crisis, with Russia and China potentially emerging as strategic, long-term beneficiaries.
This war has shown an astonishing lack of planning. The Trump administration seems to have learned nothing from the military successes and political failures of its predecessors’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The most likely winners, once the fighting subsides, will be the West’s rivals and adversaries, above all Russia and, to a lesser extent, China. The losers will be US partners in the Middle East and Europe, with the possible exception of Israel, and the US itself.
If the war ends without regime change in Iran, the Iranian people will continue to suffer both from continued repression and the consequences of US and Israeli attacks.
Although the UK and France are providing some defensive support to their Middle Eastern partners and to Cyprus, Europeans are wisely trying to avoid getting drawn into the war on Washington’s side, as they were in the ‘Global War on Terror’.
But even if, like UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, they incur Trump’s hostility, Europeans need to go further in defending their own security and economic interests. They have little to gain from supporting the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
Their responsibility to their voters is to minimize the harm to them from what Trump has described as “a short-term excursion” in Iran, but which is already beginning to look more like a prolonged nightmare.
