By Lesedi Sibiya-DiplomaticInsider
Unrest and destruction in the Middle East continues, this time in the form of a war between Israel and Iran. This began when Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran on Friday 13 June, with Israel hitting more than 100 targets n Iran which include nuclear facilities and missile sites. Iran had also retaliated against Israel since the weekend.
The reason for Israel’s attack on Iran is because the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethenyahu claims that Iran is in the midst of building a nuclear bomb through a secret Iranian programme and decided to react pre-emptively in self-defense. The Israeli missiles had claimed the lives of 244 civilians since Friday. Senior military personnel were also among fatalities including Chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Maj Gen Mohammed Bagheri and the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen Hossein Salami. The Natanz nuclear site had taken significant damage from the air strikes, this is seen as Iran’s premium nuclear enrichment facility, but the fuel enrichment facility remains intact. Iran decided to act swiftly especially since most of the casualties that occurred were civilian, they retaliated by sending missiles to Tel Aviv where 14 people were killed and 390 were injured from Iran’s retaliation according to Israeli authorities. One of the air strikes had destroyed a three-story building in the town of Tamra in Israel, which claimed the lives of four women, including six other casualties and 180 people were killed by missile strike in Bat Yam, just outside Tel Aviv according to reports made by medical attendants who were at the scene. Fires were seen erupting from power plants in the city of Tel Aviv which has caused concern that more lives may be lost in this war between the two nations.
Iran had issued warnings to the leaders of the U.K, France and the U.S that interference from them will result in Iran retaliating against them as well. These threats did not stop the U.K as they began to move jets and other military supplies to the Middle East in order to support Israel under the order of U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer who refused to be shaken by Iran’s threats. Netanyahu has claimed that Tehran had the capability to produce a total of nine nuclear bombs, this was followed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board had made a ruling that Iran had violated regulatory obligations under the nuclear proliferation treaty as they failed to fully cooperate with the proper IAEA inspections and they had amassed over 400 kg of uranium.
United States President Donald Trump has also chosen to intervene in the conflict between Iran and Israel, even cutting his G7 summit meeting short in order to focus on this conflict and has called upon the surrender of Iran or the U.S will aid Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump’s involvement came following a meeting he had with Netanyahu by phone on Tuesday 17 June, to discuss the Iran-Israel conflict as well as holding discussions with his National Security Council to discuss how to proceed accordingly. Trump has even gone as far as threatening to kill Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on his social media platform “Truth Social” if he does not surrender, “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding, we are not going to take him out at least not for now…our patience is wearing thin” he wrote on his social media platform. The U.S have been indirectly involved with conflict as they helped shoot down missiles that were heading towards Israel from Iran.
The South African government continues to express their support of Iran. As there are also South African citizens who are currently in Iran and have urged South African citizens to contact the embassy based in Tehran to ensure that the embassy is aware of their whereabouts. The government has stressed to its citizens that are in Iran that due to South Africa’s limited amount of support in the country it may be difficult for those citizens visiting Iran to receive any help in any state of emergency depending on which region they are in. This statement was issued from the offices of the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation.
The conflict is seen to be growing by the day as other countries are seemingly attempting to involve themselves in this conflict. As it stands the people of Tehran have been asked to evacuate the city in order for Israel to continue it’s attack on Nuclear bases in the area.