The real solution to Middle East war

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OPINION

By Opiyo Oloya

War is not a soccer match. Not when thousands, even millions of lives are at stake. Not when the world is on the brink of being engulfed by conflict involving the major powers. But hearing it from talking heads, including high-ranking US officials on television — CNN, ABC, BBC and so forth — war is just another sport.

The attacks and counterattacks by Israel and Iran, and the deployment of bunker-busting bombs against Iran’s nuclear installations on Saturday night, were just another game.

US officials were on all the Sunday morning talk shows to crow about what a “big success” the attacks were.

There was unconcealed glee, even jubilation,n among members of the Trump administration as they described in detail how the US B-2 bombers armed with powerful, never-before-used bombs deployed their cargo on the three sites.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said at the Sunday morning press conference, “No other country on planet earth could have conducted the operation that the chairman is going to outline this morning. Not even close.”

Then he handed the baton of the storytelling to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, to describe what happened.

The military leader was only too happy to oblige, saying, “At approximately 6:40pm Eastern Standard Time, 2:10am Iran time, the lead B-2 dropped two GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator weapons on the first of several aim points at Fordow... the remaining bombers then hit their targets as well, with a total of 14 MOPs dropped against two nuclear target areas. All three Iranian nuclear infrastructure targets were struck between 6:40pm and 7:05pm Eastern time again.”

Then there was the hordes of so-called experts and analysts swarming television to give their take on what happened and, more importantly, what they think is going to happen. You have seen them on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and elsewhere.

They are know-it-all, postulating what follows next, executing point-by-point analysis of where they think the conflict is going. For them, this is all a game — a game of chicken. Who’s gonna chicken out first? They ask — almost as if to egg on the combatant to attack the other harder, to draw first blood.

Some have been brazen enough to start talking about Third World War, what the Spanish called La Tercera Guerra Mundial. Somehow, the protagonists — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and US President Donald Trump — all seem eager to welcome an all-out war.

Trump, who previously promised to be a peacemaker, is suddenly keen to be seen as the dragon slayer, the man who stopped Tehran in its tracks.

Trump also says the US is ready to use all its military might against Iran. The Ayatollah, meanwhile, crowed about shutting down the Gulf of Hormuz.

There is no filtering of the soundbites; each of the principals is very keen to use to project power, strength and invincibility. Many of the TV analysts are just as keen to predict the escalation of the Middle East conflict into a global war.

Yet even if this was mere posturing to deter Iran from retaliating against the US, nobody on television and in the Trump administration knows the long-term implications of the attack.

Nobody knew that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo on Sunday, June 28, 1914, would be one of the main triggers of World War One.

In fact, the archduke had survived an earlier attempt that morning on his life, and by pure accident, his open-top car stalled in front of assassin Gavrilo Princip, who shot the archduke and his wife at point-blank range. Both died, and exactly one month later July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia. Every other country then lined up behind the two principals in support or opposition. Between nine to 11 million military personnel died in the war, and a further six to 13 million civilians' lives were lost.

World War Two also was not planned to happen the way it did. When Hitler decided to invade Poland in September 1939, he was looking for a quick victory and then go home. But the invasion alarmed France and Britain, who joined the fray to deter Hitler and his forces.

Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour by Imperial Japan in December 1941, the US declared war on Japan.

A few days later, Italy and Germany declared war on the US, and the war raged on. Millions, both civilians and military personnel perished in the war whose reverberations are still felt today.

All this to say, the talks of bombing Iran into submission will only push humanity closer to the brink of a bigger war without solving the issue of nuclear weapons.

As previously noted in this column, when the US acquired nuclear weapons in the 1940s and used them against Japan, it opened Pandora’s box. Just a week after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Soviet Union (now Russia) accelerated its nuclear programme, and on December 25, 1946, Russian scientists produced the first nuclear reaction.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union carried out the first nuclear test. China successfully tested a nuclear bomb on October 16, 1964. By then Britain, France, India and then Pakistan were working or had joined the nuclear club.

I ran and South Africa (yes, South Africa) started working on nuclear programmes in 1974, but obviously South Africa discontinued the same. North Korea is a latecomer to eke out enough uranium to create its nuclear arsenal.

Iran, meanwhile, has continued to work toward getting nuclear arms. It may take them another 10 years from now, but Iran will develop nuclear weapons. It has the knowledge and know-how to make them — the science of making fire, once discovered, could not be reversed. The science of creating round wheels, once learned, could not be unlearned. The same goes for nuclear weapons. The genii were out of the bottle the moment the US developed nuclear technology.

Simply, the reality of war in the age of nuclear bombs is a lot dirtier, messier and bloodier than that.

As it is, already hundreds have been killed in the current round between Iran and Israel. These numbers may appear small by comparison to past wars, but make no mistake, the numbers will increase as more enter the foray of combat.

Even one civilian killed is already one civilian too many, let alone two dozen or more. Now imagine what would happen if the whole world suddenly went at it in a sustained way.

Who knows what will happen if there is a Third World War? Who can say whether one or the other members of the Nuclear Club will not choose to use the bomb?

The point being that this is not a soccer game where the players work to score goals to the big cheers of their supporters. No, this is a situation where one bad move could spell disaster for the entire life species on the planet Earth. We could choose to blow ourselves to smithereens.

The real solution to the Middle East war is for everyone, including Israel, to come together at the negotiation table to talk about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Merely saying that it is okay for Israel to have them, but not Iran, is not going to cut it.

Opiyo.oloya@gmail.com Twitter: @Opiyooloya

Dr Opiyo Oloya is the Inaugural Associate Vice President, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada