Israel v Iran

“Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. IBM.” A wide-eyed young teenager watched her science teacher as he mouthed this phrase as though he were singing crooked musical notes. Intercontinental Ballistic what?? And her Science teacher kept going on about how they could be set off in one country to detonate in another. It sounded too grand a theory, and impossible at the same time. By the way, when would Ghana make some IBM? And who would lead them in that creative venture. The teacher also mentioned the term “fission”, a process which he claimed was a never-ending disintegration of an atomic bomb. In the continuation of the processes of fusion and fission in senior secondary school physics, the growing teenager would have an occasional frown? Where did Einstein seek to go with his E = mc²? And, were Oppenheimer and his colleagues happier for what  happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were they turning in their graves?

The events above gave such force to Friday 13^th June 2025!, when the world woke up to a full-scale attack on Iran, by Israel, who started throwing missiles inside of Iran with the intent of a possible nuclear disarmament of Iran; to destroy the Iranian Nuclear weaponization threshold program: their nuclear facilities, high ranking military, and government officials. The attack led to the deaths and neutralisation of a total of about 220 human beings at the start in Iran alone. This was followed with reprisals from Iran, leading to a further 24 deaths the following day in Israel – and a confused world. Admittedly while Iran was still at the negotiating table about nuclear disarmament, Israel sprang a surprise attack on them. A whole week passed by and there was no hope of a de-escalation of the conflict between the two countries. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would fight as long as necessary to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, calling it an “existential danger.” The question though is  this, why is a nuclear program in Iran an existential danger, does it become less an existential danger in the hands of Israel, UK, France, India, Russia or any of their nuclear arms companions?

In my childhood there were a lot of bombings on CNN, Reuters. There was usually a mention of Hezbollah, Gaza, Iraq, and Israel. With US sometimes acting like a meddlesome big brother, irresponsible or responsible depending on how you viewed them. But I least expected that in 2025 there would be wars of this scale – with drones flying very low. After a weeklong exchange of missiles, the US started suggesting an unconditional surrender by Iran. Personally, I never understood the logic of Trump demanding for the unconditional surrender of one side over the other, even Iran (don’t ask me why). Then according to Trump, the US were deciding whether or not to join in the war? For what? As usual, US brought itself in the prominent center. On Saturday 22^nd of June, like a dream, USA joined the conflict in a monumental way.

President Trump invaded Iran’s air space, and bombed three nuclear facilities/sites in Iran; FORDOW, NATANZ, and ISEAHAN. Iran’s Foreign Minister- Abbas Aragchi responded that the form of US’ intervention was a serious breach of Iran’s sovereignty, and that the US ‘betrayed Diplomacy’ by their actions. His “There will be everlasting consequences.”, sounded like a dirge in my ears, (09/11 foreshadowed). I wonder what the future implications might be.

Russia followed with a release of a statement calling the US action irresponsible, although they would not get involved in the war militarily. Neither would China. China condemned US’s use of force in Iran’s territory, describing it as “strongly violating International Law, the UN Charter and the non-proliferation regime.” Beijing went on to offer itself as a Mediator between Israel and Iran in the conflict but some described their offer as laughable as China had in the past described itself a brother to Iran.

Following the US attack, counter options open to Iran included a cyber-attack, taking of hostages, naval drones, potential to affect global oil prices, a direct attack on US ships on the red sea(!) to any scale and scope. However, Iran maintained a proportionate response (in my opinion) to the US attacks by bombing US base in Qatar, Qatarians caught in the crossfire of the Iranian strike. Of course, US made a trifling of the damage to its base by calling Iran’s response weak. They afterwards invited Iran back to the negotiations table. Soon afterwards, Trump made his famous declarations of a confirmed ceasefire.

However, within an hour of the announced ceasefire, both countries were accused of violating the truce. Indeed, the Ceasefire agreement had been violated by both countries, just because Iran apparently made a mistake and sent a missile or two into Israel killing five people after the ceasefire was announced. Israel also issued a counter-attack killing 9 Iranians. After the declaration of the so-called ceasefire, its violation so riled up President Donald Trump so much that he fired the whole world with his own “f”- word bomb. EU also called both parties to show maximum restraint, asking that they observe and stand by the ceasefire agreement. Pope Leo XVI called Catholics the world over to pray the Holy Rosary. And before we knew it, the war was suddenly over! Phew!!! Hopefully it stays this way.